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POEMS FROM SHELLEY AND KEATS 



► 



iiflacmillan's pocket Eiifllisl) Classics. 



A Series of English Texts, edited for use in Secondary 
Schools, with Critical Introductions, Notes, etc. 



l6mo. Levanteen. 25c. each. 



Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley. 

Browning's Shorter Poems. 

Burke's Speech on Conciliation. 

Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 

Carlyle's Essay on Burns. 

Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. 

Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. 

De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium-Eater. 

Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. 

Eliot's Silas Marner. 

Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. 

Irving's The Alhambra. 

Longfellow's Evangeline. 

Lowell's The Vision of Sir Launfal. 

Macaulay's Essay on Addison. 

Macaulay's Essay on Milton. 

Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings. 

Milton's Comus, Lycidas, and Other Poems. 

Milton's Paradise Lost, Books I and H. 

Pope's Homer's Iliad. 

Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. 

Scott's Ivanhoe. 

Scott's The Lady of the Lake. 

Scott's Marm'on. 

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. 

Shakespeare's Macbeth. 

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. 

Shelley and Keats: Poems. 

Tennyson's The Idylls of the King. 

Tennyson's The Princess. 



OTHERS TO FOLLOW. 



•'M 





v^ 



POEMS FROM SHELLEY 



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SELECTED AND EDITED 

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BY 




SIDNEY 


CARLETON 


NEWSOM 



TEACHER OF ENGLISH IN THE MANUAL TRAINING 
HIGH SCHOOL, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1900 

All rights reserved 



libPWTT of Con$rre«« 

Two Copies Received 
AUG 171900 

Ceiiyright tnUy 

SECOND copy, 

ORDER DIVISIO 



8024^*^-^^ 




vn 



«i 



COPYEIQHT, 1900, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mas*. U.S.A. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The joint committee on English requirements for 
admission to college recommends, among other sup- 
plementary readings, selections from the poetry of 
Shelley and Keats. The present volume includes, 
it is hoped, all the more popular poems of these two 
authors. Opportunity for choice is thereby given, 
since the length of time ordinarily devoted to litera- 
ture in the high school will make it impossible to 
read all of the selections. 

Poems of Shelley and Keats, judiciously chosen, 
are admirably suited to the needs of the high school 
pupil. Both wrote when young, and their poetry 
embodies ideas with which young people must always 
be in lively sympathy. 

In the introduction it has been the aim to furnish 
only such information and suggestions as are easily 
within the comprehension of the average pupil. For- 
mal criticism should be dealt with sparingly in the 



vi PREFATORY NOTE 

high school, yet it does not seem advisable to ignore 
it entirely. When possible the notes have been 
written in the form of questions. There are instances, 
however, in which a direct statement of facts is neces- 
sary, though in the case of Shelley and Keats these 
instances are comparatively rare. 

Inconsistencies in spelling have been emended, 
otherwise the texts followed are those of Dowden 
and Forman. The poems are not arranged in chrono- 
logical order. 

The chief sources from which information has been 
drawn in preparing this volume are given under " Bib- 
liography," though special mention should be made of 
the Essays of Hutton, Bagehot, Arnold, and Dowden; 
and of the " Life of Keats " by Colvin. 

S. C. N. 

Indianapolis, 
June, 1900. 



CONTENTS 



1. Prefatory Note 



2. 



3. 



Introduction : 
Life of Shelley . 
Shelley as a Poet 
Bibliography 
Life of Keats 
Keats as a Poet . 
Bibliography 



2. 

3. 

4. 

6. 

6. 

7. 

8. 

9. 
10. 
11. 



Poems from Shelley 
1. To a Skylark 
The Cloud . 
Ode to the West Wind 
With a Guitar, to Jane 
Sonnet, Lift not the Painted Veil 
Sonnet, England in 1819 



Song to the Men of England 
The Sensitive Plant 
To Wordsworth . 
To Coleridge 
Mont Blanc 

vu 



PAGE 
V 



XI 

xxlx 

xl 

xli 

1 

Iv 



1 

6 
10 
14 
17 
18 
19 
21 
36 
37 
38 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



12. Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 

13. To Constantia, singing 

14. Hymn of Apollo 

15. Hymn of Pan 

16. Arethusa .... 

17. Song of Proserpine (while gathering flowers on 

the plain of Enna) .... 

18. Song: " Rarely, rarely comest thou " 

19. To : " Music, when soft voices die " . 

20. Lines written among the Euganean Hills . 

21. Ozymandias 

22. Lines : The cold earth slept below 

23. The World's Wanderers .... 

24. A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade 

Glouc^tershire 

25. Time . 

26. To Night . 

27. A Lament . 

28. Stanzas written in Dejection near Naples 

29. A Voice in the Air singing ^ Extracts from Pro- 

30. Asia answers J metheus Unbound 

31. Adonais .... , . . 



4. Poems from Keats : 

1. Ode to a Nightingale , 

2. Ode on a Grecian Urn 

3. Ode to Psyche . 

4. To Autumn 

5. Ode on Melancholy , 



CONTENTS 



IX 



6. Fancy 

7. La Belle Dame sans Merci . 

8. O Solitude ! if I must with thee dwell 

9. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer 
10. Sonnet on the Sea 
IL Two Sonnets on Fame 

12. Sonnet to Sleep .... 

13. Sonnet to Homer 

14. Opening Lines from Endymion . 

15. I stood Tip- toe upon a Little Hill 

16. Lsabella ; or, the Pot of Basil 

17. The Eve of St. Agnes 



Notes 



1. To the Poems from Shelley 

2. To the Poems from Keats . 



PAGE 

132 
136 
139 
139 
140 
141 
142 
143 
144 
146 
156 
182 



201 
213 



Index to Notes 



219 



INTRODUCTION 



LIFE OF SHELLEY 

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792. His 
family was an old one, reaching back throngh a long 
line of ancestors to Henry Shelley of Worniinghurst, 
Sussex, who died in 1623. Some authorities find mem- 
bers of the family present at the Norman Conquest; 
others, less easily pleased, mention Henry Shelley, an 
officer in the court of Henry VII, as a notable repre- 
sentative. The record is perfectly clear so far back as 
1623; beyond this there is some confusion. 

Sir Bysshe Shelley, the poet's grandfather, was the 
first member of his own branch of the family to 
achieve distinction. He was born in Newark, New 
Jersey, North America, married twice before he was 
forty years of age, amassed a great fortune, and died 
in 1806, a crabbed, penurious old man. Timothy, the 
only son, succeeded to his father's title and estates, 
but did not inherit the dash and charm nor other 
striking qualities which made Sir Bysshe in his youth 

xi 



XU INTRODUCTION 

and early manhood an interesting character. Indeed, 
there was nothing to distinguish Timothy Shelley 
from the rank and file of the somewhat stolid and com- 
placent squirearchy of the latter half of the eighteenth 
century. Mrs. Shelley, whom he married in 1791, was 
a lady of unusual beauty, not especially interested in 
books, though a good letter-writer. She appears to 
have been sensible and kindly, and, though possessed 
of a rather violent temper, not inconsiderate of her 
children. Shelley was the oldest in a family of six, 
two boys and four girls. 

At the age of six, under a Welsh parson who taught 
him chiefly Latin, Shelley's education was begun. 
Four years later he entered Sion House Academy, 
near Brentford, where the head master. Dr. Greenlaw, 
superintended the instruction of fifty or sixty boys in 
Latin, Greek, French, and the elements of astronomy. 
After two years here he went to Eton and thence, in 
1810, at the age of eighteen, to Oxford. 

The chief account of Shelley's early life at home 
before his entrance at Oxford is given by his younger 
sister Hellen. The brother John, born in 1806, was 
too young to be a companion, but the four sisters were 
associates and eager sympathizers in all his sports and 
boyish pranks. These were many and curious. A 
garret, long closed and unused, was " undoubtedly the 
habitation of an alchemist, old and gray, with venera- 



d 



INTRODUCTION Xlii 

ble beard, where by lamplight the sage pored over some 
magic tome " ; the space above a low passage must 
be investigated in search of a mysterious chamber, the 
lurking-place of some awful secret. The " Great 
Tortoise " of a neighboring pond and the " Great Old 
Snake " that hid in the gardens were subjects of end- 
less tales of enchantment and terror, at whose recital 
the little girls would shudder and Bysshe would 
assume the attitude of protector. With the aid of his 
sisters he sometimes sought to give concrete form to 
his imaginary world. ^' They became a crew of super- 
natural monsters: the little girls in strange garbs 
were fiends ; Bysshe the great devil bearing along 
the passage to the back door a fire stove flaming with 
his infernal liquids." Occasionally his boyish spirit 
found exercise in practical jokes: "At one time a 
countryman passed the windows of Field Place, with 
a truss of hay forked over his shoulders ; the intruder 
was recalled, and there stood Bysshe, disguised." At 
another time " a lad called on Colonel Sergison at the 
Horsham lawyer's house and asked in Sussex dialect to 
be engaged as gamekeeper's boy ; his suit was successful, 
and ' then of course there was an explosion of laughter ' 
and the jester stood revealed." 

His residence at school furnishes a decided contrast 
to this happy life at home. His progress under his 
first teacher was slow, but at Sion Academy he stood 



XIV INTBODUCTION 



m 



high in his classes. "He learned," writes Medwin, 
his classmate and future biographer, " seemingly with] 
out study, for during his school hours he was won 
to gaze at the passing clouds — all that could be seen 
from the lofty windows which his desk fronted, or 
watch the swallows as they flitted past; or would 
scrawl in his schoolbooks rude drawings of pines and 
cedars in memory of those on the lawn of his native 
home." Experimental science was not included in the 
curriculum, but an instructor who lectured on science 
at Eton gave occasional talks and experiments at the 
academy. Shelley became intensely interested. His 
lessons in astronomy had taught him the wonderful 
scope of the universe, and now the microscope would, 
he hoped, disclose the no less wonderful secrets of 
animal life. 

If his tasks were done with little difficulty, his 
daily associations with his schoolfellows presented 
problems not so easily solved. Erom the first he was 
an alien. No regular system of fagging was organized 
at the academy, but Shelley seems to have offered oppor- 
tunities not' to be thrown away. He had little in com- 
mon with his classmates, and with the quick intuition 
of boys they detected the fact, which, indeed, Shelley 
himself did not know how, or think necessary, to con- 
ceal. They discovered, however, that upon occasion 
it would be well to avoid him. Driven to desperation 



f 



INTRODUCTION XV 

by their brutal tricks, in a frenzy lie would seize for 
a weapon whatever object lay nearest him. 

At Eton fagging was reduced to a system and 
Shelley's difficulties were multiplied. His apparent 
singularities once known, he became a butt for every 
rude jest that boyish ingenuity could invent. His tor- 
mentors succeeded at times in making him wretched, 
but other than this he remained unaffected. He was 
independent to the last. 

It would be wrong, however, to conclude that Shel- 
ley's life at Eton was wholly unhappy. There were 
a few from whom he did not hold himself aloof, — a 
few who were constituted somewhat like himself. One 
friend speaks of long " rambles and lovely prospects 
of river and wood, where Milton had paused to view 
the towers and battlements of Windsor, ' bosomed high 
in tufted trees,' " or a visit to the picturesque church- 
yard where Gray is said to have written his Elegy ; 
another mentions his wonder and delight while listen- 
ing to Shelley's " marvellous stories of fairy-land, and 
apparitions, and spirits and haunted ground." Many 
years afterward Shelley remembered the hours spent 
thus with congenial companions. 

"Those bottles of warm tea — 
(Give me some straw) — must be stowed tenderly ; 
Such as we used, in Summer, after six, 
To cram in greatcoat pockets, and to mix 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

Hard eggs and radishes and rolls at Eton, 
And couched on stolen hay in those green harbours 
Farmers called gaps and we schoolboys called arbours 
Would feast till eight." 

In his studies he did not restrict himself to the 
prescribed course. Franklin and Godwin among Eng- 
lish authors, Lucretius and Pliny among the classics, 
were read with unusual zest. Interest in science 
which had been aroused at the Academy was now in- 
tensified. " Night," says a schoolfellow, " was his 
jubilee. He launched his fire balloons on errands to 
the sky," he performed experiments in physics and 
chemistry, the latter a forbidden subject at Eton, and 
prepared surprises for his visitors, not excepting his 
tutor. During vacation at Field Place he became the 
master magician for his sisters and younger friends. 
He found endless amusement in teaching them the 
mysteries of the galvanic battery and the uses of the 
burning-glass. His work in science did not, as may 
well be imagined, extend very far. He was impatient 
of mathematics, and science interested him chiefly as 
a pleasing recreation and not as a means of strenuous 
discipline. 

Shelley's residence at Oxford continued less than 
a year. His one intimate friend there was Thomas 
Hogg, who has given an interesting though not always 
accurate account of Shelley's life at college. They 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

met almost on the first day in the dining hall of the 
University, and the chance acquaintance thus made 
soon grew into a warm friendship. " His figure,'^ 
says Hogg in describing his appearance at this time, 
"was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints 
were large and strong. In gesture he was abrupt and 
sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet 
more frequently gentle and graceful. His complex- 
ion was delicate and almost feminine, of the purest 
red and white ; yet tanned and freckled by exposure 
to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in 
shooting. . . . His features were not symmetrical 
(the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of 
the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an 
animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid and preter- 
natural intelligence that I have never met with in 
any other countenance. Nor was. the moral expression 
less beautiful than the intellectual ; for there was a 
softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and especially (though 
this will surprise many) that air of profound religious 
veneration that characterizes the best works and chiefly 
the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole 
souls) of the greatest masters of Florence and Rome." 
In many respects the life at Oxford was very pleas- 
ing to Shelley. Its freedom suited him, and he did 
pretty much as he pleased. He was uninterrupted by 
mischievous boys, and had much time for recreation 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

and opportunity for reading not suggested by his 
teachers. The lectures were not satisfactory ) and he 
took small interest in them ; but to Hogg he seemed 
" a whole University in himself " in the enthusiasm 
with which he read, and, in turn, stimulated his 
companion. He still gave attention to experimental 
science. His room was topsy-turvy with various ap- 
paratus and materials, but Hogg's indifference and 
occasional cynicism dampened Shelley's ardor. He 
was Shelley's senior by some years, and, there is lit- 
tle doubt, exercised an abiding, and for a time con- 
trolling, influence on him. With quick insight he 
recognized his wonderful genius. Though he was too 
much a man of the world to worship blindly, if at all, 
his admiration for Shelley was genuine. Himself an 
occasional writer of poetry and ardent lover of litera- 
ture, he found inspiration and delight in the society 
of one who surpassed him from every point of view. 
The two walked, read, disputed, all but lived together. 
" The examination of a chapter of Locke's ' Essay 
Concerning Human Understanding,' " declares Hogg, 
" would induce him at any moment to quit every 
other pursuit." Hume's Essays, the Scotch metaphy- 
sicians, and " popular French works that treat of man, 
for the most part in a mixed method, metaphysically, 
morally, and politically," were eagerly discussed, and 
the facts and laws therein discovered as eagerly and 



INTRODUCTION xix 

earnestly, by Shelley at least, applied to existing 
institutions. 

Utopias have ever been beloved of idealists; and 
theories such as the two found in their reading ap- 
pealed with peculiar force to Shelley. Oxford was 
there to furnish a contrast. Blindly subservient to the 
past, the University offered little to attract a young 
and ardent spirit, bent on examining every institution 
in the light of its own worth. And Shelley, in his 
youthful enthusiasm, was learning to question. The 
authors he had been reading influenced him much; 
Hogg, perhaps, more ; and Oxford, it can hardly be 
doubted, offered a silent challenge. 

Soon after the Christmas holidays there appeared 
in the Oxford Herald an advertisement of a pamphlet, 
The Necessity of Atheism. The pamphlet was pub- 
lished very shortly after, and copies were distributed 
throughout the University. It bore no signature, but 
Shelley was supposed to be the author. He was 
arraigned and questioned by the authorities, but de- 
clined giving the desired information. Thereupon he 
was summarily dismissed the University upon the 
charge of "contumacy in refusing to answer certain 
questions." Hogg, of his own accord, sent a note to 
the Master and Fellows, protesting against their 
course. He was summoned and the same questions 
asked Shelley were addressed to him. Upon his re- 
fusal to answer, he too was expelled. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

Shelley's offence has been described as " the rash act 
of a boy whose brain was at work, who loved to im- 
press his own ideas on others, and who enjoyed the 
excitement of an intellectual adventure." The fact of 
his extreme youthfulness certainly goes far toward 
excusing him, but this, and whatever other palliative 
circumstances may suggest themselves, did not soften 
the punishment which Shelley suffered then and, to 
some extent, during his future life. The expulsiou 
marks a turning-point in his career. The attitude of 
his father, already irritated at his son's eccentricities, 
together with the treatment received at Oxford, 
aroused a spirit of defiance which so far had been 
latent. He refused outright to obey his father's com- 
mands, and proceeded to London in company with 
Hogg. Two of his sisters, who were at school near 
London, supplied him with money, sending it by 
their classmate, a certain Harriet Westbrook. 

In the meantime, through the intervention of friends, 
Shelley was given an allowance of £200 a year with 
permission to choose his place of residence. For 
a time he remained at Field Place, but found the 
conditions there intolerable. While on a visit to 
Wales he again met Harriet, with whom he had 
been corresponding. The acquaintance, begun a few 
months before, now grew into an intimacy which 
ended in a sudden elopement to Scotland and mar- 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

riage there August 11, 1811. Shelley was nineteen 
years old; his wife, sixteen. Timothy Shelley 
promptly stopped the allowance upon hearing of his 
son's marriage, and Mr. Westbrook refused to help 
them. Before the end of the year, however, when Shel- 
ley had suffered the inconveniences and anxieties of 
one in debt with no prospect of relief, the allowance 
was restored, Mr. Westbrook contributing a like sum. 

The remainder of Shelley's life was spent in 
wandering to and fro. He was drawn to Keswick by 
his admiration for Southey, whose principles at an 
earlier date were now, in a large measure, Shelley's 
own. Personal acquaintance with Southey does not 
seem to have increased Shelley's regard. The elder 
poet had grown conservative, and criticised, too severely 
perhaps, some of Shelley's plans for reorganizing so- 
ciety. Some months later Shelley addressed a letter 
to Godwin, whom he had never seen. " Your name," 
he wrote, " I had enrolled in the list of the honorable 
dead." Upon discovering Godwin's place of abode 
he at once communicated with him. A reply came 
promptly, warning Shelley against his attitude toward 
his father and his too eager enthusiasm for reforming 
the world. 

But Shelley was not to be dissuaded. Accompanied 
by his wife and sister-in-law, he went to Ireland, where 
he might give aid in the struggle for political indepen- 



XXll INTRODUCTION 

dence and religious freedom. Six weeks were spent 
in Dublin. He wrote one or two pamphlets and 
published an Address to the Irish People. When he 
spoke before a great audience met to consider a peti- 
tion to the Prince E-egent in behalf of Catholic Eman- 
cipation, it misinterpreted him, applauding and hissing 
by turns. " I am sick of this city," he wrote ; " the 
spirit of bigotry is high, . . . and prejudices are so 
violent, in contradiction to my principles, that more 
hate me as a freethinker than love me as a votary of 
freedom." 

Not discouraged, he continued in his efforts to 
emancipate humanity. Upon his return to England, 
at the small village of Lynmouth on the coast of 
Devon, in company with a friend, he employed himself 
in floating boxes and bottles containing copies of his 
pamphlets. Occasionally a balloon was loosened bear- 
ing in its hold A Declaration of Rights. His servant 
Healy was arrested and imprisoned for posting up 
certain seditious notices, and Shelley himself was 
closely watched by government detectives. 

His efforts to improve the condition of the people, 
however, did not end with the promulgation of abstract 
theories. At Tremadoc he exercised himself in vari- 
ous ways to relieve the poor. He visited them in 
their homes, supplying food and medicine, gave money 
in cases of distress, and generously subscribed £100 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

toward building an embankment whose completion 
would infinitely benefit the laboring classes of the 
neighborhood. 

His activities in this direction were not successful. 
He removed to London, where he became more or less 
intimately associated with Hogg, Peacock, Godwin, 
and Leigh Hunt. The respect and admiration with 
which he regarded Godwin were strengthened by a 
more intimate knowledge of that philosopher's ways 
of thinking. Nor can there be any question as to the 
wholesomeness of Godwin's influence (more powerful 
than any other at any period in moulding Shelley's 
thought) upon him at this time. He felt the in- 
adequacy of Shelley's abstract doctrines because he 
himself was the medium through which they came. 
He advised him to study history, and understand what 
had been noble in human character and action, which, 
he observed, " is perhaps superior to all the theories 
and speculations that can possibly be formed." 

At his mother's request Shelley made a clandestine 
visit to Field Place. He had previously addressed a 
conciliatory letter to his father, hoping that the "un- 
favorable traits" of his character might be condoned, 
and that the time was not far distant when they 
might " consider each other as father and son." But 
Timothy Shelley wished to impose conditions which 
could not be borne. Shelley declined to renounce his 



xxir INTRODUCTION 

convictions and accepted in silence his father's refusal 
of " all further communication." 

It is not the purpose of this brief account of Shelley 
to discuss minutely certain vexed questions of his life. 
Both his attitude toward his father and his course of 
action in matters touching yet more directly the purity 
and manliness of his character have enlisted the ser- 
vices of those who condemn and those who defend. It 
is sufficient to state that annoyances and misfortunes 
at this period made his life wretched. His domestic 
relations were unhappy. Extreme generosity to God- 
win and others placed him at the mercy of creditors 
who harassed him ceaselessly. The death of Sir 
Bysshe Shelley improved the situation in some meas- 
ure, but, as if to offset advantages, entailed a settlement 
between Shelley and his father. Sir Timothy sought 
to make Shelley's younger brother, John, the heir to 
the estate, but certain provisions in the will prevented. 
Negotiations dragged on interminably, but finally 
ended in a partial settlement, whereby Bysshe re- 
ceived a yearly allowance during his life of i^lOOO. 

Shortly after the death of his wife Shelley married 
Mary, the daughter of Godwin and Mary Wollstone- 
craft. The suit with his father still continued, and 
made his residence in London necessary. Early in 
1817, relieved of this, he removed to Marlow, on the 
Thames, a short distance out from the city. 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

Though impaired in health and under the stress of 
a fancied obligation to pay Godwin's debts, he looked 
back in after years upon the time at Marlow as one of 
the happiest periods of his life. Among acquaintances 
who visited him may be mentioned Hunt, Peacock, 
Hazlitt, and Keats. Mrs. Shelley, a student and 
lover of literature hardly less eager than Shelley, was 
busily engaged with Frankenstein, which she finished 
during the year. Shelley himself read and studied 
much. English authors were not ignored, but the 
Greek dramatists attracted him more strongly. He 
busied himself with a translation of the Homeric 
Hymns, but his most significant work was The Revolt 
of Islam, his longest poem. Though finding his chief 
pleasure in social intercourse with his chosen friends 
and in study, he did not forget the poor. He went 
among them just as he did at Tremadoc, and "on Sat- 
urday evenings came his pensioners for their allow- 
ance, widows and children being preferred to other 
claimants." 

As winter set in Shelley's health declined. Yielding 
to the advice of physicians, he decided to seek change 
of climate in Italy. Accompanied by his family, he 
sailed early in 1818, sojourned at Milan for two weeks, 
and settled temporarily at Leghorn about the 1st of 
May. Byron, whom Shelley had met in Switzerland 
two years before, he now visited at Venice. Julian and 



XXvi INTRODUCTION 

Maddalo is a veiled account of his impressions at this 
time of B^a-on, and a description, somewhat colored, 
of himself. He recognized the great qualities of 
Byron's genius, but detected at once the contempti- 
ble elements in his character. In the course of the 
next three years he learned to know Byron Avell, and 
his first impressions were strengthened by more inti- 
mate associations. 

Shelley's life in Italy was nomadic. In England 
he had hoped for a permanent home at Marlow, but 
for many reasons his wish came to naught. In Italy 
his health improved, yet the severe climate during 
the winter in the northern portions racked him with 
pain. His place of residence depended largely upon 
change of seasons. A spirit of innate restlessness, 
too, developed largely no doubt by his wanderings in 
England, made it impossible for him to remain long 
in one place. He visited all the more famous Italian 
cities, writing and studying continually. In 1819, 
Shelley's annus mirabiUs, he finished, at Florence, 
Prometheus Unbound, begun at Este, a villa near 
Venice. The Cenci, Mask of Ayiarchy, Peter Bell the 
Third, Ode to Naples, Ode to the West Wind, with one 
or two shorter but exquisite lyrics, complete the list of 
his poetical creations for the year, and bear evidence 
to the unusual vigor of his literary activity. 

From January, 1820, till the close of his life, Shelley 



INTRODUCTION XXvii 

resided the greater part of the time at Pisa. Byron 
joined him there, and the two decided to start a new 
periodical, The Liberal. Hunt, who had been ill at 
home in England, was asked to be the editor. The 
circle of friends was increased during the year by the 
arrival of Trelawny, who had become acquainted with 
Shelley sometime earlier through their common friend, 
Edward Williams. Trelawny has given an extremely 
interesting account of Shelley's last days in his Rec- 
ollectioyis. The three friends were passionately fond 
of the sea, and it was agreed to spend the summer 
months on the coast of the Bay of Spezzia. 

In the meantime Shelley was writing enthusiastic 
letters to Hunt, urging him to make all haste. Sick- 
ness and other misfortunes made it necessary to fur- 
nish Hunt with money for the voyage and to provide 
for the comfort of himself and family during their 
first days in Italy. On June 19, 1822, the long 
wished for arrival was announced. In company with 
Williams and a boy who should manage the boat, Shel- 
ley sailed for Leghorn, where he met Byron and Hunt. 
After much vacillation on the part of Byron, definite 
arrangements were made for the publication of The 
Liberal. Among other things Hunt should have the 
copyright of The Vision of Judgment for the first num- 
ber, which " is more than enough," wrote Shelley, " to 
set up the Journal." 



xxvill INTRODUCTION 

On July 8, with his two companions, Shelley started 
on his return voyage across the bay. The weather 
was threatening, and Hunt begged him to wait. Ten 
miles out the boat was observed by friends in Leghorn, 
then a mist and spray thrown up by the thunder-squall 
hid it from view. The storm passed in twenty minutes, 
and Trelawny eagerly scanned the horizon, but Shel- 
ley's boat had disappeared. A period of intense anxi- 
ety followed. One week later two bodies were found 
upon the beach and identified as those of Williams and 
Shelley. In one of Shelley's pockets was found a 
volume of Sophocles, in the other, doubled back at the 
"Eve of St. Agnes," a volume of Keats's poetry which 
had been given him at Leghorn by Hunt. The quar- 
antine laws of the Italian coast made it necessary, in 
the opinion of friends, to burn the remains near the 
place where they were discovered. This was done 
under the supervision of Trelawny in the presence of 
Captain Shenley, an English officer. Hunt, and Byron. 



INTRODUCTION xxix 



SHELLEY AS A POET 

From whatever point of view the reader approaches 
the entire body of Shelley's poetry for purposes of 
study, a simple classification is necessary. The series 
of poems, beginning with Queen Mah, an immature 
boyish composition, and ending with Hellas, written 
shortly before his death, embody the views of Shelley 
the reformer. The shorter poems disclose, in the main, 
the purely sesthetic qualities of Shelley the poet. A 
brief discussion of both philosophical and lyrical poems 
will be appropriate. 

It has been recorded that on August 4, 1792, the 
day of Shelley's birth, along the roads near Field 
Place, "the aristocratic emigrants in coaches, in 
wagons, in fish-carts," were pouring from revolutionary 
France. The coincidence is very suggestive. Shelley 
was a firm believer in the principles of the French 
Revolution, and throughout his life remained a stead- 
fast supporter of the cause, as he conceived it, of lib- 
erty. In matters of abstract philosophy and religion 
he changed his opinions, and in mature years disowned 
with shame Queen Mob, the completest exposition in 
verse of his early revolutionary ideas. But in politics 
he treasured to the last his vision of an ideal state, 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

where love would be the all-sufficient motive, and rea- 
son the guide to action. 

His estimate of the innate qualities of the human 
mind and heart was high. "The prominent feature 
of Shelley's theory of the destiny of the human 
species," writes Mrs. Shelley, "was that evil is not 
inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident 
that might be expelled." He insisted that error and 
ignorance are the ultimate sources of man's sorrow 
and degradation, and that the race is capable of infi- 
nite improvement. The chief obstacle, as he saw it, is 
a system of government which permits unscrupulous 
rulers to oppress and stultify their subjects. The 
representative system of the " Republic of the United 
States " is " sufficiently remote from ideal excellence," 
yet " the most perfect of practical governments," and 
one in which the freedom, happiness, and strength of 
its people are due to their political institutions. Two 
conditions, however, demand the most careful consid- 
eration : first, " the will of the people should be repre- 
sented as it is ; " secondly, " that will should be as wise 
and just as possible." ^ The fundamental conception of 
such ideal excellence was not original with Shelley. 
Many writers contributed to his views, Godwin more 
than others ; but the distinct form and imaginative 

1 Shelley's "Philosophical View of Reform," Transcripts and 
Studies, Dowdeu, pp. 41-74. 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

coloring in which these bare abstractions are presented 
are Shelley's own. 

Prometheus Unbound is perhaps the most adequate 
statement of his hope for the future, as it is certcdnly 
his greatest achievement in poetry. It is written in 
the form of a lyrical drama, a species of composition 
in which Shelley imitates the method of the Greek 
tragedians. There is no attempt at delineation of 
human character, and the abstract ideas which the 
poem embodies are more or less obscure because of 
the cumbrous machinery of allegory. A Greek myth, 
used by ^Eschylus in Proinetheus Bound, serves with 
alterations for the general plan of the poem. The 
friend of mankind is personified, in the figure of 
Prometheus, who is chained to a rock and exposed 
to various evils by Jupiter, the unjust and tyrannous 
ruler of the universe. When Prometheus, defying 
his enemy, has suffered centuries of torture, Demo- 
gorgon, the primal power of the world, drives Jupiter 
from his throne, and Necessity, in the person of Her- 
cules, delivers Prometheus from his sufferings. Asia, 
the wife of Prometheus, represents the spirit of love 
in the human race. She is now restored to her hus- 
band, and their union marks the beginning of the 
Golden Age. 

Shelley's political philosophy did not escape criti- 
cism during his life. It has been the subject of much 



XXXll INTRODUCTION 



1 



discussion since his time. It is at once evident that 
his system is impracticable, and that its chief defect 
springs from his ignorance of humanity. The insist- 
ence that evil resides wholly in things external and 
not in the will of man is warranted neither by history 
nor by the most casual study of modern states. Such 
study and reflection must inevitably force the conclu- 
sion that "humanity is no chained Titan of indomi- 
table virtue," but " a weak, trembling thing which yet, 
through error and weakness, traversed or overcome, 
may at last grow strong." ^ A republic, which comes 
nearest Shelley's ideal, is precisely so good from every 
point of view as its people. It is neither above nor 
below the standard insisted upon by the majority of 
voters. There may be abuses and temporary defeat 
of the popular will, but in the end it is this that 
regulates, or rather is, the law. " The progress that 
concerns us," as has been well said, "is that which 
consists in working out the beast, and in gradually 
growing to the fulness of the stature of the perfect 
man." ^ Reforms that are far-reaching and permanent 
must begin in work which refines the emotional and 
intellectual nature of the average man, and not in 
abstractions which at best only embody his present 
views of life. 

But is it wise to estimate the value of Prometheus 

1 Life of Shelley, Dowden, Vol. n., p. 264. 



INTRODUCTION XXXiii 

Unbound in the light of its fallacies ? It certainly 
urges a doctrine that is practically false, but this is 
only a partial statement of the truth. Out of Shelley's 
imperfect and distorted views come other things 
which the world has always treasured. The political 
principles in which he believed gained the sincere 
admiration and support of Wordsworth and Coleridge 
in their earlier days. They, like Shelley, proclaimed 
a Golden Age, but, unlike him, lived long enough to 
forget their dream and accept the world as it is. No 
poet has conceived more highly of the possibilities of 
human life nor remained truer to his ideal. Himself 
of aristocratic family, he was unwilling to accept 
worldly advantages springing from his position, which 
would in his opinion entail an unjust law upon future 
generations.^ 

At the very heart of his eager enthusiasm for hu- 
manity was an abiding love of justice, a love so strong 
that the dry abstractions and theories of his long 
philosophical poems become radiant in its light. 
Springing from this and hardly less pronounced were 
his intense sympathy for the oppressed, and his hatred 
of the oppressor. His belief in the brotherhood of man 
and his recognition of the responsibility of the state 
for the welfare of the individual are firmly established 

iln the settlement with his father he was offered a great fortune 
upon condition of entailing the estate. Shelley refused. 



XXXI V INTROD UCTION 



1 

hisi 



in the popular mind, just as other tendencies of 
thought, not so clearly expressed, are distinctly 
modern. " I never could discern in him," writes 
Hogg, " more than two fixed principles. The first was 
a strong, irrepressible love of liberty ; . . . the second, 
an equally ardent love of toleration of all opinions; 
as a deduction and corollary from which latter prin- 
ciple, he felt an intense abhorrence of persecution of 
every kind, public or private." His experience at 
Eton in the midst of schoolboy trials doubtless had 
much to do with his views, but one can hardly escape 
the impression that his love of liberty was innate 
and that the radiant splendor of his verse is due to 
the depth and earnestness of his convictions. 



Certain critics, discrediting Shelley's political phi- 
losophy as vague and inadequate, are enthusiastic in 
praise of the lyrical passages scattered throughout his 
longer poems. Yet, even in these passages, as well as 
in nearly all of his purely lyrical verse, one may detect 
the author's " enthusiasm for humanity." " I consider 
poetry very subordinate to moral and political science," 
he writes to Peacock, "and if circumstances permitted 
I would aspire to the latter." It is doubtless true, 
however, that his most enduring work is his short 
poems, and for reasons already sufficiently indicated. 



INTRODUCTION XXXV 

Lyrical poetry is, in tlie main, the expression of 
personal mood or feeling, and the essential qualities 
of mind of a writer of lyrical poetry are extreme sen- 
sitiveness, great emotional and imaginative power. 
Shelley possessed each of these qualities in an unusual 
degree. Impressions from the outside world, too deli- 
cate and evanescent for ordinary perceptions, influ- 
enced him profoundly. " I am formed," he declares;, 
"if for anything not in common with the herd of man- 
kind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of 
feeling, whether relative to external nature or the liv- 
ing beings which surround us." The accuracy of this 
bit of self-analysis is verified over and over again in 
his poetry. A brief study of the diction and phrasing 
in the Sensitive Plant, for instance, shows how fine is 
his sensibility. There are ^^ quivering vapors of dim 
noontide," '-music delicate, soft and" yet " intense, '* 
" The tremulous bells of the Naiad like lily " and other 
descriptions remarkable for their delicate shades and 
shadows. The ardor with which he responded to 
these " minute and remote distinctions " may seem at 
times to the casual reader out of all proportion to the 
circumstances. 

It has, in fact, been pointed out ^ that to this impul- 
siveness is largely due a characteristic of Shelley's 
poetry which we have come to regard as a fault. The 

^Aspects of Poetry, Sliairp, pp. 194-218. 



XXXVi INTRODUCTION 



11 



natural world, as it really is, has little place in his 
poetry. He catches a glimpse of the landscape, an out- 
line of the mountain peak, or a momentary gleam of 
the sea, and straightway busies himself with his impres- 
sions. "Nature he uses mainly to call from it some 
of its most delicate tints, some faint hues of the dawn 
or the sunset clouds, to weave in and color the web of 
his abstract dream." Many poets portray nature with 
great faithfulness. The strength and charm of Words- 
worth's poetry lie in this as much as in anything else. 
To many readers, however, Shelley's ideal creations are 
as dear as Wordsworth's realistic descriptions. The 
two things are different, and each, in its way, is admir- 
able, and the more delightful for its opposite. We 
need to remember that the countless beautiful forms 
and images in Shelley's poetry, the radiant color in- 
vesting them, the spontaneity and freedom of his lyric 
utterance, and the matchless rhythm of his verse, all 
owe in a large measure their exquisite charm to this 
impulsiveness. 

The true explanation of his imperfect grasp of the 
objects of nature is not far to seek. The cause does 
not lie in a weak sensibility, as might at first be in- 
ferred, but in the hot impatience and irritability of 
his temperament, as already suggested, joined to an 
imaginative power rarely equalled in literature. "Un- 
der the influence of a sentiment which would at most 



INTRODUCTION XXXvii 

warm the surface of other poets' minds into a genial 
glow, Shelley's bubbles up from its very depths into 
a sort of pale passion, and seethes with imprisoned 
thought." What has been explained by critics is 
corroborated by Shelley in conversation with Hogg. 
" When my brain gets heated with thought," he ob- 
served, "it soon boils, and throws off images and words 
faster than I can skim them off." Such a mind is 
poorly qualified for precise delineation of the actual 
facts of nature. By its very constitution it recoils 
from long-continued observation, and is incapable of 
holding up its subject for narrow inspection. The 
emotional and imaginative qualities of mind must 
wait, to be sure, upon the receptive powers. The ideal 
world is ultimately dependent upon the actual world, 
but in Shelley's case the dependence is often so remote 
that the reader is confused amid the rapid succession of 
forms and images having so little in common with 
what is visible and tangible about us. For complete 
understanding one must continually seek and find the 
poet's point of view. 

The scope of his imagination is no less wonderful 
than its fineness. " What can the ordinary person say 
about a cloud?" some one has asked. In a blunt way 
the question forcibly suggests Shelley's power. The 
magnificent sweep of his conceptions, when he has 
chosen some immense element or force of nature for 



XXXVlll INTRODUCTION 

his theme, is in striking contrast to the delicate pre- 
cision and' finish of some of his minor lyrics. Prome- 
theus Unbound illustrates this most adequately, but 
one or two shorter poems afford excellent examples 
He is often forced in such instances to use his material 
under the form of personification or allegory, and one 
would expect poetry of this kind to be cold and me- 
chanical. But Shelley's lyrical force sustains him. 
What would be attenuated and all but lifeless in 
another poet, is made to glow under the touch of his 
passionate inspiration. He is equally at home in mak- 
ing his reader realize the awful grandeur of the bound- 
less regions of space, and in portraying with nicest 
touch the tremulous tints of a summer dawn; and it 
is rarely the case that any one of his poems does not 
show in some degree these two extremes of his imagi- 
native range. 

Briefly, then, the qualities of mind and heart which 
are found in Shelley's poetry are first a dominant im- 
pulse or passion for reforming mankind. This wish 
or hope for a future Golden Age is the theme, almost 
unsupported, of the greatest of his poems. The ideas 
of reform given in Prometheus Unbound, are those 
of the dreamer rather than the practical statesman. 
Their value lies in the fact that Shelley is an optimist 
and encourages us to believe in and trust the innate 
goodness of the human heart. Their falsity lies in 



I 



INTRODUCTION xxxix 

Shelley's ignorance of mankind and in a meagre, im- 
perfect knowledge of history. As a writer of lyrical 
poetry his interest in the welfare of the race is more 
or less evident. Yet the purely aesthetic qualities of 
his mind constitute the chief value of his shorter 
poems. These qualities are extreme sensitiveness, 
great emotional and imaginative power. Keenly 
susceptible to all things beautiful, his mind was no 
less active in bodying forth its figures and images in 
marvellous profusion and beauty. 



xl 



INTRODUCTION 



^ 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (Shelley) 



Symonds, Life of Shelley. English Men of Letters. 

Dowden, Life of Shelley. Two volumes. 

Hogg, T. J., Life of Shelley. Two volumes. 

Arnold, Essays in Criticism. Second series. 

Bagehot, Literary Studies. 

Shairp, Aspects of Poetry. 

Mason, E., Personal Traits of British Authors. 

Scudder, V. D., The Greek Spirit in Shelley and Browning. 

Dowden, Transcripts and Studies. Second edition. 

Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley. 

Hutton, Literary Essays. 

Woodberry, Studies in Letters and Life. 



INTRODUCTION xli 



LIFE OF KEATS 

"The publication of three small volumes of verse," 
writes Houghton in his life of Keats, " some earnest 
friendships, one profound passion, and a premature 
death . . . [are] the only incidents of his career.'^ 
This statement accurately summarizes this admirable 
biography, but is far too brief for those who would 
know that life in its fulness. 

John Keats was born in 1795 and died in 1821. His 
father, Thomas Keats, born and bred in the country, 
came to London when a boy and secured the place 
of head hostler in a livery stable owned by a Mr. 
John Jennings. As time progressed, he married the 
daughter of his employer ; and later, upon retirement 
of his father-in-law from active affairs, assumed entire 
control of the business management. Keats's mother, 
whose temperament he inherited, has been described 
as "a lively, clever, impulsive woman, passionately 
fond of amusement." Besides the poet, the eldest 
child, there were four children, three brothers and a 
sister. The youngest son died in infancy, and the 
father was killed by a fall from his horse in 1801. 
The family, thus reduced to the mother and four chil- 
dren, continued their residence at the old home for 



xlii INTRODUCTION 

little more than a year, Mrs. Keats marrying, in the 
meantime, a Mr. Rawlings who had succeeded herB 
husband in control of the livery stable. The second 
marriage was unhappy, and Mrs. Rawlings with her 
children went to the home of her mother, Mrs. Jen- 
nings, who lived at Edmonton. 

Very little is known of the home life of the family. 
Both father and mother w^ere devoted to their chil- 
dren, and before the father died, John, with the 
brother George, next to him in age, were sent to the 
private school of the E-ev. Mr. Clarke at Enfield. 
Upon the removal of the family to Edmonton, the 
residence of John at Enfield, with that of the younger 
brother, Tom, was still continued. The account given 
in later years by his schoolmates there is the chief 
source of information concerning Keats, and indirectl}^ 
concerning his family. 

He passed five years (1805-1810) of his boyhood in 
the school at Enfield. At first he showed little apti- 
tude for his books, but during the last terms, in his 
fourteenth and fifteenth years, he became unusually 
studious and easily took the prizes offered by the 
school for excellence in literature. In addition to 
the regular course he began a translation of the 
^neid into prose, and read books of history and 
Ancient mythology. " In my mind's eye," writes 
Cowden Clarke, son of the principal of the school 



INTRODUCTION xliii 

and one of Keats's warmest friends, "I see him at 
supper, sitting back on the form from the table, hold- 
ing the folio volume of Burnefs History of My Own 
Time between himself and the table, eating his meal 
from beyond it." 

His schoolboy friends seem to have been chosen on 
the score of their courage and lighting propensities. 
"He himself would light any one — morning, noon, 
and night," writes a classmate ; and another observes 
that he had " a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when 
roused, was one of the most picturesque exhibitions 
— off the stage — I ever saw." With the same una- 
nimity it is recorded that he was the favorite of all. 
The generosity and highmindedness of his character 
were no less evident than his pugnacity, and espe- 
cially fine was the zealous care with which he pro- 
tected his younger brother. 

Keats's boyhood was full of happiness, but in the 
midst of his pleasures came misfortune. His mother, 
who had been in poor health for some time, declined 
rapidly and suddenly died. The family were bound 
together by ties of natural affection unusually strong, 
and Keats was inconsolable in his sorrow, giving 
" way to such impassioned and prolonged grief (hiding 
himself in a nook under the master's desk), as awak- 
ened the liveliest pity and sympathy in all who saw 
him." Six months later, July, 1810, his grandmother 



xliv INTRODUCTION 

executed a deed leaving the larger part of her property 
to the orphan children and placing them under the 
care of two guardians. 

One of these, Mr. Abbey, with the consent of his 
associate, assumed control of the children upon the 
death of Mrs. Jennings a few months later. It was 
decided that Keats should fit himself for the practical 
business of life. He was accordingly w^ithdrawn from 
school and apprenticed to a surgeon for a term of five 
years. Little is known of his work as an apprentice, 
but the friendships formed during the years at school 
were not forgotten. Once a week he walked to Enfield 
to read and talk with Cowden Clarke. He finished 
his translation of the ^neid during this time, and 
became deeply interested in the poetry of Spenser. 
The Faerie Queene, in particular, fascinated him. 
" Through the new world thus opened to him [he] 
went ranging with delight — ^ramping' is Cowden 
Clarke's word ; he showed, moreover, his own instincts 
for the poetical art by fastening with critical enthu- 
siasm on epithets of special felicity or power. Tor 
instance,' says his friend, 'he hoisted himself up and 
looking burly and dominant, as he said, "■ What an 
image that is — sea-shouldering whales." ' " It is doubt- 
less true that the Faerie Queene first stimulated Keats 
into a consciousness of his own poetical genius. The 
Imitation of Spenser is, probably, his earliest poetry ; 



INTRODUCTION xlv 

but inspired, by his master and encouraged by the 
sympathy of his friend. Clarke, he continued to write 
occasional sonnets and. other verse. 

In the meantime his work as apprentice was grow- 
ing extremely distasteful. There is no direct evidence 
of a quarrel with Hammond or of neglect of duty, yet 
it is probable that the drudgery of a surgeon appren- 
ticeship and his growing love of poetry were incom- 
patible. He did not as yet, however, give up his 
profession, but decided to continue his studies in Lon- 
don. He spent a year at St. Thomas's Hospital, suc- 
cessfully passed his examinations, and was appointed, 
March, 1816, a dresser at Guy's Hospital. He had 
become skilful and dexterous in surgical operations, 
and declared to Brown, his personal friend, that he 
could use the scalpel " with the utmost nicety." But 
it is quite evident that his tasks were perfunctory. 
" Sketches of pansies and other flowers " occasionally 
" decorated the margin of his manuscript note-book." 
When questioned by Clarke about his studies he 
observed, " The other day, for instance, during the 
lecture, there came a sunbeam into the room, and 
with it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray, 
and I was off with them to Oberon and fairy-land." 
He did his work regularly at the hospitals, but his 
inclinations were otherwise and he gradually yielded 
to them. 



xlvi INTRODUCTION 

Clarke, who had settled in London, introduced him 
to Leigh Hunt. Through the Examiner, Hunt's maga- 
zine, he had come to know the author while yet a II 
schoolboy at Enfield, and had learned to admire him. ■ 
They were soon warm friends and in time became 
very intimate. Hunt, shallow, graceful, and with a 
disposition of sunshine, was immeasurably beneath 
Keats in native endowment, yet he exercised for a 
time a controlling and moulding influence upon him. 
They passed much time together and had many tastes 
in common. Other acquaintances were Shelley, to 
whom Keats did not take very kindly, Hayden the 
artist, and Severn, who a few years later was to accom- 
pany him to Italy. 

In 1817, at the suggestion of friends, he published 
his first volume of poems. Though containing Soli- 
tude, Sleep and Poetry, and other unmistakable evi- 
dences of high poetic faculty, the book made very 
little impression upon the public. Hunt wrote a 
friendly though discriminating criticism in the Exam- 
iner, and through his influence the volume received 
notice in several papers. A few chosen friends were 
enthusiastic and encouraged Keats to continue writ- 
ing. Yielding to their advice, he made an excursion 
to the Isle of Wight in order to have the benefit of 
seclusion and rest, which he felt he needed before 
beginning new work. 



INTRODUCTION xlvii 

His circle of friends was growing larger. He met 
Lamb, Hazlitt, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Hazlitt 
was delivering a series of lectures on literature at 
Surrey Institute, and he and Keats became good friends, 
though Hazlitt does not seem to have recognized fully 
Keats's greatness. Mention is made of " an immortal 
dinner" given by Hayden, where Wordsworth quoted 
Milton and Virgil " with fine intonation " and Lamb 
perpetrated absurd jokes. Later Wordsworth invited 
Keats to his home. Keats recited the Hymn to Pan 
(Endymion) and Wordsworth patronizingly observed 
that it was " a pretty piece of Paganism." 

Endymion, begun a year before, was published early 
in 1818. Immediately thereafter, in company with a 
friend, Keats started on a walking tour through 
northern England. They visited the lake region, but 
missed seeing Wordsworth, who happened to be away 
from home. Keats was in excellent spirits, and at 
first thoroughly enjoyed the rugged scenery and the 
novelty of his daily experiences with the country 
people. But before his tour was half finished he 
began to suffer from exposure. Several times he was 
drenched to the skin, and climbing mountains was too 
much for him. In a letter he complains of " a slight 
sore throat," and adds that he has over-exerted him- 
self. He became feverish, and finally decided, upon 
the advice of a physician whom he consulted, to return 



xlviii INTRODUCTION 

to London by boat, leaving his friend to complete the 
tour alone. From this time on Keats's health steadilyli 
declined. His inherent tendency to consumption was 
undoubtedly strengthened by his indiscretion and 
thoughtlessness. 

Immediately upon his return to London there ap- 
peared a brutal criticism of Endymion in the peri- 
odical, Blackwood. Later the Quarterly contained 
an article hardly less savage. Keats was too fully 
conscious of his own integrity and of the meanness of 
motive behind these criticisms to be seriously affected 
by them. Li a letter to a friend he observes, " When 
I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such 
a glow as my own solitary re-perception and ratifica- 
tion of what is fine." It is not probable, as once 
was thought, that the criticisms of these periodicals 
hastened in any large measure his death. 

The remaining incidents of Keats's life need not be 
recited in detail. His best poetry — the six odes — 
was yet to be written, but misfortunes of one sort or 
another made his last days wretched. His invalid 
brother, Tom, to whom he was devotedly attached, 
after a lingering illness died. George, the companion 
brother of his boyhood days, had emigrated to the 
United States, and Keats himself, in addition to his 
declining health, was in financial straits that pressed 
him greatly. He attempted to find work on the press 
in London, but failed. 



INTRODUCTION xlix 

In the midst of these disappointments he became 
despondent and careless of his health. Presh expos- 
ure resulted in renewed hemorrhages, and in company 
with his friend Severn he took passage for Italy in 
September, 1820. Shelley, immediately upon hearing 
of Keats's sickness, had written from Pisa urging him 
to make his home there. But Severn and Keats had 
both decided upon Rome and it was too late to alter 
plans. The voyage and the climate of Italy proved 
beneficial and for a time Keats rallied. Severn enter- 
tained strong hopes of his recovery, but the improve- 
ment was deceptive. A second relapse was followed 
by his death, on February 23, 1821. "Three days 
later his body was carried, attended by several of the 
English in Rome who had heard his story, to its grave 
in that retired and verdant cemetery, which for his 
sake and Shelley's has become a place of pilgrimage 
to the English race forever." 



INTRODUCTION 



KEATS AS A POET | 



We usually think of Keats as one of the chief poets 
of the "Romantic School." In the history of the 
development of English literature he is given a place 
with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron. It 
is well, however, when possible, to indicate more pre- 
cisely a poet's relations to his contemporaries. 

Wordsworth complained that with one or two excep- 
tions not a single new image of external nature had 
been given from the publication of Paradise Lost to 
the Seasons — a period of sixty years. Of course 
Wordsworth's statement is too sweeping; yet the 
exaggeration may be pardoned when we consider the 
extent to which the English poets were hampered by 
literary precedent at the beginning of this century. 
Ideals of any sort which have come gradually and 
have fastened themselves firmly in the public mind 
cannot be attacked with impunity. The criticism 
directed against Wordsworth was hardly less than 
downright insult. The principles of poetic composi- 
tion which he was at pains to state very minutely in 
the prefaces to his poems were received with scorn, 
and he himself was the subject of ridicule not unmixed 
with contempt. Hazlitt declares that " if Byron was 



INTRODUCTION li 

the spoiled child of fortune, Wordsworth was the 
si)oiled child of disappointment." After his thirtieth 
year Wordsworth wrote very little genuine poetry, 
and Coleridge's best work appeared in the Lyrical 
Ballads. Wordsworth stubbornly upheld his theories 
to the end of his long life, and Coleridge lost himself 
in the mazes of philosophy and metaphysics. 

There is no doubt, however, that they sowed the 
seeds of a revolution whose results have been alto- 
gether beneficial. Their sympathies were with the 
great Elizabethans, and the tendency of much in 
their theories of poetry and in their practice points 
to the Age of Shakespeare as the only literary period 
worthy of serious attention. Keats has been called 
" alike by gifts and training a true child of the 
Elizabethans." A close study of his poetry makes 
the truth of the statement evident. Responding to 
the influences of his time, he looked beyond his own 
age and the one preceding for his ideals, and found 
them in Milton, Spenser, and Shakespeare. 

Coming directly to a consideration of the qualities 
of his style, we are at once impressed with his extraor- 
dinary susceptibility to the beauty of the natural 
world. A friend observes that " He was in his glory 
in the fields. The humming of a bee, the sight of a 
flower, the glitter of the sun, seemed to make his 
nature tremble j then his eyes flashed, his cheek 



1l 



lii INTRODUCTION 

glowed, and his mouth quivered." He is at home 
with his sensations, and his sympathy with nature 
is not of the intellectual or reflective kind. He 
does not seek to harmonize his love of nature wit 
any system of philosophy, but rather to know and 
enjoy without restraint the beauty of her forms. 
This freedom from conventions is a partial explaa 
nation of the utter simplicity and exquisite freshness 
of his verse. Face to face with natural phenomena 
he was untrammelled by prejudices. No theory chilled 
his innocent delight nor retarded a complete devotion 
to the charm of sensuous beauty. It was his instinct 
to respond quickly and eagerly to all appeals to the 
eye and ear, and to realize for his reader the perfect 
beauty of the woods and fields. 

Though primarily a poet of the senses, he is hot 
deficient in imaginative power. His arraignment of 
eighteenth century writers, who 

"... were closely wed 
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule 
And compass vile, 

indicates his feeling for the school of Pope, and his 
statement that '' poetry should surprise by a fine ex- 
cess " suggests at once the imaginative qualities of his 
own verse. Not so daring as Shelley nor so faithful 
as Wordsworth, he excels both in the gorgeous color 



INTRODUCTION liii 

of his imagery. If he sins, as some would have it, it 
is on the side of over-decoration, yet the ease and ab- 
sence of all effort with which he works go far toward 
disarming criticism. In bringing home to one a vivid 
picture of natural scenery or of any beautiful object, 
he is unique among poets. The force of his descrip- 
tions lies in this, more perhaps than in anything else. 
His experience becomes our experience, and we seem 
to be in the actual presence of the objects portrayed. 

No analysis, of course, will disclose the ultimate se- 
cret of this, any more than it will the subtle charm of 
any genuine work of art. Yet the remarkable vivid- 
ness of his imagery is surely heightened by the action 
and movement which are rarely absent from his de- 
scriptions, and by his perfect feeling for word and 
phrase. " I have loved the principle of beauty in all 
things," he writes, and this extends to the vehicle as 
well as the substance of his thought. It is this rare 
sensitiveness to the power of words that calls forth 
Matthew Arnold's well-known eulogy, " Shakespearian 
work it is ; not imitative, indeed, of Shakespeare, 
but Shakespearian, because its expression has that 
rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness of which 
Shakespeare is the great master." 

Keats died before he was twenty-six years old, and 
nearly all the poems by which he is most favorably 
known were produced in rapid succession during a 



li V INTROD UCTION 



I 



period of twenty monthvS. Tliis is a sufficient explana- 
tion of much tliat is crude in his work. The wonder 
is that under the circumstances, he produced so much 
that is without a flaw. His errors are those of youth 
and immaturity. " Would the faculties that were so 
swift to reveal the hidden delights of nature, to divine 
the true spirit of antiquity, to conjure with the spell 
of the Middle Age — would they with time have 
gained equal power to unlock the mysteries of the 
heart, and still, in obedience to the law of beauty, to 
illuminate and harmonize the great struggles and prob- 
lems of human life ? " There is good reason for be- 
lieving so, yet, taking his poetry as it is, one must 
admit that he does not explore the heights and depths 
of human experience. In a perfectly innocent youth- 
ful way he revels in the beauties of the natural world, 
pointing the way for others, less gifted, to a love of 
nature not less complete and genuine than his own. 



INTRODUCTION Iv 



BIBLIOGRAPHY (Keats) 

Sidney Colvin, Life of Keats. English Men of Letters. 
Sidney Colvin, Life of Keats. Dictionary of National Biogra- 
phy. 
W. M. Rossetti, Life of Keats. Great Writers. 
Dawson, W. J., The Makers of Modern English. 
Masson, D., Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other essays. 
Arnold, Essays in Criticism. Second series. 
Woodberry, Studies in Letters and Life. 



POEMS FROM SHELLEY 



TO A SKYLAKK 

Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! 

Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 

Poorest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher still and higher 

From the earth thou springest 
Like a cloud of hre ;° 

The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever 
singest. lo 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are brightning, 

Thou dost float and run ; 
Like an unbodied° joy whose race is just begun. 

B 1 



TO A SKYLARK 

The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight ; 
Like a star of heaven, 
In the broad daylight 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill de- 
light. 20 

Keen as are the arrows 
Of that silver sphere, 
Whose intense lamp narrows 
In the white dawn clear. 
Until we hardly see, — we feel that it is there. 

All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare, 
Erom one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is 
overflowed. 30 

What thou art we know not ; 

What is most like thee ? 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 

Drops so bright to see. 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 



TO A SKYLARK 3 

Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 

Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not ; 40 

Like a high-born maiden 

In a palace-tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 
Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her 
bower : 

Like a glow-worm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from 
the view : 50 

Like a rose embowered 

In its own green leaves. 
By warm winds deflowered, 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much ^,sweet these heavy- 
winged thieves : 



4 TO A SKYLARK 

Sound of vernal showers 

On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awakened flowers, 

All that ever was 59 

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass : 



Teach us, sprite or bird 



What sweet thoughts are thine : 
I have never heard 
Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

Chorus Hymeneal, 

Or triumphal chant, 
Matched with thine would be all 

But an empty vaunt, 
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 70 

What object are the fountains 

Of thy hapjjy strain ? 
What fields, or waves, or mountains ? 
What shapes of sky or plain ? 
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of 
pain? 



TO A SKYLARK 6 

With thy clear keen joyance 

Languor cannot be : 
Shadow of annoyance 
Never came near thee : 
Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 80 

Waking or asleep, 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 
Than we mortals dream, 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal 
stream ? 

We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught ; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 
thought. 90 

Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear; 
If we were things born 

Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 



6 TO A SKYLARK 

Better than all measures 

Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 
That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thoii scorner of the ground! loo 

Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 
From my lips would flow, 
The world should listen then, as I am listening 
now. 

THE CLOUD 

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, 

From the seas and the streams ; 
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid 

In their noonday dreams. 
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet buds every one, 
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, 

As she dances about the sun. 
I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 

And whiten the green plains under, lo 



THE CLOUD 7 

And then again I dissolve it in rain, 
And laugh as I pass in thunder. 

I sift the snow on the mountains below, 

And their great pines groan aghast ; 
And all the night 'tis my pillow white. 

While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers. 

Lightning my pilot sits, 
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder. 

It struggles and howls at fits ; 20 

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, 

This pilot is guiding me, 
Lured by the love of the genii that move 

In the depths of the purple sea; 
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, 

Over the lakes and the plains. 
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, 

The Spirit he loves remains ; 
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 

Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 30 

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 

And his burning plumes outspread. 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 



8 THE CLOUD 

When the ihorning star shines dead, 
As on the jag of a mountain crag, 

Which an earthquake rocks and swings, 
An eagle lit one moment may sit 

In the light of its golden wings. 
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea 
beneath, ■ 

Its ardors of rest and of love, 40 

And the crimson pall of eve may fall 

From the depths of heaven above, 
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, 

As still as a brooding dove. 

That orbed maiden with white fire laden. 

Whom mortals call the moon. 
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, 

By the midnight breezes strewn ; 
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 

Which only the angels hear, 50 

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, 

The stars peep behind her and peer ; 
°And I laugh to see them whirl and flee. 

Like a swarm of golden bees. 
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent. 

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas. 



THE CLOUD 9 

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 
Are each paved with the moon and these. 

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, 

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ; 60 

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, 

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 
From cape to cape with a bridge-like shape, 

Over a torrent sea, 
Sunbeam -proof, I hang like a roof. 

The mountains its columns be. 
The triumphal arch through which I march 

With hurricane, fire, and snow, 
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair. 

Is the million-colored bow ; 70 

The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove. 

While the moist earth was laughing below. 

I am the daughter of earth and water. 

And the nursling of the sky ; 
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 

I change, but I cannot die. 
For after the rain when with never a stain. 

The pavilion of heaven is bare. 
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex 
gleams, 



10 THE CLOUD 



m^ 



Build up the blue dome of air, 
I silently laugli at my own cenotaph, 

And out of the caverns of rain. 
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the 
tomb, 

I arise and unbuild it again. 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND 



WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being. 
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes : thou. 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill j 

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 
With living hues and odors plain and hill : 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND 11 

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere ; 
Destroyer and preserver ; hear, hear ! 

II 

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, 
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 

Angels of rain and lightning : there are spread 

On the blue surface of thine airy surge. 

Like the bright hair unlifted from the head 20 

Of some fierce "Maenad, even from the dim verge 

Of the horizon to the zenith's height 

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night 
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 
Vaulted with all thy congregated might 

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere 

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst ; hear ! 

Ill 

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 30 

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, 



12 ODE TO THE WEST WIND 

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, 
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! Thou 

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 40' 

Thy voice, and suddenly °grow gray with fear. 
And tremble and despoil themselves ; hear ! 

IV 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ; 

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; 

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
Than thou, O uncontrollable ! If even 
I were as in my boyhood, and could be 



The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven. 

As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed 50 

Scarce seemed a vision ; I would ne'er have striven 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND 13 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 
One too like thee : tameless, and swift, and proud. 



Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: 
What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 60 

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, 
My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ! 
And, by the incantation of this verse. 

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth 

The trumpet of a prophecy ! wind, 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? 70 



14 WITH A GUITAR, TO JANE 

WITH A GUITAE, TO JANE 

Ariel to °Miranda. — Take 

The slave of Music, for the sake 

Of him who is the slave of thee, 

And teach it all the harmony 

In which thou canst, and only thou, 

Make the delighted spirit glow, 

Till joy denies itself again. 

And, too intense, is turned to pain ; 

For by permission and command 

Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 

Poor Ariel sends this silent token 

Of more than ever can be spoken ; 

Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who. 

From life to life, must still j)ursue 

Your happiness ; — for thus alone 

Can Ariel ever find his own. 

From Prospero's enchanted cell, 

As the mighty verses tell. 

To the throne of Naples, he 

Lit you o'er the trackless sea, 

Flitting on, your prow before. 

Like a living meteor. 

When you die, the silent Moon, 



WITH A GUITAR, TO JANE 15 

In her interlunar swoon, 

Is not sadder in her cell 

Than deserted Ariel. 

When you live again on earth, 

Like an unseen star of birth, 

Ariel guides you o'er the sea 

Of life from your nativity. 30 

Many changes have been run, 

Since Ferdinand and you begun 

Your course of love, and Ariel still 

Has tracked your steps, and served your will ; 

Now, in humbler, happier lot, 

This is all remembered not ; 

And now, alas ! the poor sprite is 

Imprisoned, for some fault of his, 

In a body like a grave ; — 

From you he only dares to crave, 40 

For his service and his sorrow, 

A smile to-day, a song to-morrow. 

The artist who this idol wrought, 
To echo all harmonious thought. 
Felled a tree, while on the steep 
The woods were in their winter sleep, 
Rocked in that repose divine 



16 WITH A GUITAR, TO JANE 

On the wind-swept Apennine ; 

And dreaming, some of Autumn past, 

And some of Spring approaching fast, 

And some of April buds and showers, 

And some of songs in July bowers, 

And all of love ; and so this tree, — 

O that such our death may be ! — 

Died in sleep and felt no pain, 

To live in happier form again : 

From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star, 

The artist wrought this loved Guitar, 

And taught it justly to reply, 

To all who question skilfully, 60 

In language gentle as thine ownj 

Whispering in enamoured tone 

Sweet oracles of woods and dells, 

And summer winds in sylvan cells ; 

For it had learnt all harmonies 

Of the plains and of the skies, 

Of the forests and the mountains. 

And the many-voiced fountains ; 

The clearest echoes of the hills. 

The softest notes of falling rills, 70 

The melodies of birds and bees. 

The murmuring of summer seas, 



LIFT NOT THE PAINTED VEIL 17 

And pattering rain, and breathing dew, 

And airs of evening ; and it knew 

That seldom-heard mysterious sound, 

AVhich, driven on its diurnal round, 

As it floats through boundless day, 

Our world enkindles on its way — 

All this it knows, but will not tell 

To those who cannot question well 80 

The spirit that inhabits it ; 

It talks according to the wit 

Of its companions ; and no more 

Is heard than has been felt before. 

By those who tempt it to betray 

These secrets of an elder day : 

But sweetly as its answers will 

Flatter hands of perfect skill, 

It keeps its highest, holiest tone 

For our beloved Jane alone. 90 

SONNET 

Lift not the painted veil which those who live 
Call Life : though unreal shapes be pictured there. 
And it but mimic all we would believe 
With colors idly spread, — behind, lurk Fear 



18 ENGLAND IN 1819 

And Hope, twin destinies ; who ever weave 
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. 
I knew one who had lifted it — he sought, 
For his lost heart was tender, things to love, 
But found them not, alas ! nor was there aught 
The world contains, the which he could approve. lo 
Through the unheeding many he did move, 
A splendor among shadows, a bright blot 
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove 
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not. 

SOKNET: ENGLAND IN 1819 

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, — 
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow 
Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring, — 
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know. 
But leech-like to their fainting country cling. 
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, — 
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, — 
An army, which liberticide and prey 
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield 
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay ; lo 
Religion Christless, Godless — a book sealed ; 
A Senate, — Time's worst statute unrepealed, — 



MEN OF ENGLAND 19 



Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may 
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day. 



SONG TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND 



Men of England, wherefore plough 
For the lords who lay ye low ? 
Wherefore weave with toil and care 
The rich robes your tyrants wear ? 

II 

Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save. 
From the cradle to the grave. 
Those ungrateful drones who would 
Drain .your sweat — nay, drink your blood ? 



Ill 

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge 
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge. 
That these stingless drones may spoil 
The forced produce of your toil ? 



20 MEN OF ENGLAND 



IV 



Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, 
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm ? 
Or what is it ye buy so dear 
With your pain and with your fear ? 



The seed ye sow, another reaps ; 
The wealth ye find, another keeps ; 
The robes you weave, another wears ; 
The arms ye forge, another bears. 

VI 

Sow seed, — but let no tyrant reap ; 
Find wealth, — let no impostor heap ; 
Weave robes, — let not the idle wear ; 
Forge arms, — in your defence to bear. 

VII 

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells ; 
In halls ye deck another dwells. 
Why shake the chains ye wrought ? Ye see 
The steel ye tempered glance on ye. 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 21 



VIII 



With plough and spade, and hoe and loom, 
Trace your grave, and build your tomb, 30 

And weave your winding-sheet, till fair 
England be your sepulchre. 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 

« 

Part First 

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew. 
And the young winds fed it with silver dew, 
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 
And closed them beneath the kisses of night. 

And the Spring arose on the garden fair. 
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere ; 
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast 
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. 

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss 
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, 10 

Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, 
As the companionless Sensitive Plant. 



22 THE SENSITIVE PLANT 

The snowdrop, and then the violet, 
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, 
And their breath was mixed with fresh odor, sent 
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument. 

Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, 
And narcissi, the fairest among them all, 
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, 
Till they die of their own dear loveliness ; 

And the jSTaiad-like lily of the vale, 
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale, 
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen 
Through their pavilions of tender green ; 

And the hyacinth purple and white and blue, 
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew 
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense. 
It was felt like an odor within the sense ; 

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed, 
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast. 
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare : 

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, 
As a Maenad, its moonlight-colored cup. 



30 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 23 

Till the fiery star, which is its eye, 

Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky ; 

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, 

The sweetest flower for scent that blows ; 

And all rare blossoms from every clime, 

Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 40 

And on the stream whose inconstant bosom 
Was pranked under boughs of embowering blossom, 
With golden and green light, slanting through 
Their heaven of many a tangled hue. 

Broad water-lilies lay tremulously. 

And starry river-buds glimmered by. 

And around them the soft stream did glide and dance 

With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. 

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, 
Which led through the garden along and across, 50 
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze. 
Some lost among bowers 'of blossoming trees. 

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells 
As fair as the fabulous °asphodels. 
And flowrets which drooping as day drooped too 
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, 
To °roof the glow-worm from the evening dew. 



24 THE SENSITIVE PLANT 

And from this undefiled Paradise 
The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes 
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet 
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it), 

When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them, 
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem, 
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one 
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun; 

For each one was interpenetrated 
With the light and the odor its neighbor shed, 
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear 
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere. 69 

But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit 
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root. 
Received more than all, it loved more than ever. 
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver ; 

Por the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower ; 
Radiance and odor are not its dower ; 
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full. 
It desires what it has not, the beautiful ! 

The light winds which from unsustaining wings 
Shed the music of many murmurings j 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 25 

The beams which dart from many a star 80 

Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar; 

The phmied insects swift and free, 
Like golden boats on a sunny sea, 
Laden with light and odor, which pass 
Over the gleam of the living grass; 

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie 
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high, 
Then wander like spirits among the spheres. 
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears ; 

The quivering vapors of dim noontide, 90 

Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide. 
In which every sound, and odor, and beam. 
Move, as reeds in a single stream ; 

Each and all like ministering angels were 
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear. 
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by 
Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky. 

And when evening descended from heaven above. 
And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love. 
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep 100 
And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep, 



26 THE SENSITIVE PLANT 

And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were_ 

drowned 
In an ocean of dreams without a sound ; 
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress 
The light sand which paves it, consciousness ; 

(Only overhead the sweet nightingale 

Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, 

And snatches of its Elysian chant 

Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant.) 

The Sensitive Plant was the earliest no 

Up-gathered into the bosom of rest ; 
A sweet child weary of its delight. 
The feeblest and yet the favorite. 
Cradled within the embrace of night. 

Part Second 

There was a Power in this sweet place, 
An Eve in this Eden ; a ruling grace 
Which to the flowers did they waken or dream, 
Was as God is to the starry scheme. 

A Lady, the wonder of her kind, 

Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind 120 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 27 

Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion 
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean, 

Tended the garden from morn to even : 
And the meteors of that sublunar heaven, 
Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth. 
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth ! 

She had no companion of mortal race, 
But her tremulous breath and her flushing face 
Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes 
That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise: 130 

As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake 

Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake. 

As if yet around her he lingering were. 

Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. 

Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed; 
You might hear by the heaving of her breast, 
That the coming and going of the wind 
Brought pleasure there and left passion behind. 

And wherever her airy footstep trod. 
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod 140 

Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep, 
Like a sunny storm o'er the dark green deep. 



28 THE SENSITIVE PLANT 

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet 
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet; 
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came 
From her glowing fingers through all their frame. 

She sprinkled bright water from the stream 

On those that were faint with the sunny beam ; 

And out of the cups of the heavy flowers 

She emptied the rain of the thunder showers. 150 

She lifted their heads with her tender hands, 
And sustained them with rods and osier bands; 
If the flowers had been her own infants she 
Could never have nursed them more tenderly. 

And all killing insects and gnawing worms, 
And things of obscene and unlovely forms, 
She bore in a basket of Indian woof, 
Into the rough woods far aloof, 

In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full, 
The freshest her gentle hands could pull 160 

For the poor banished insects, whose intent, 
Although they did ill, was innocent. 

But the bee and the beam-like ephemeris 

Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 29 

The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she 
Make her attendant angels be. 

And many an antenatal tomb, 

Where butterflies dream of the life to come, 

She left clinging round the smooth and dark 

Edge of the odorous cedar bark. 170 

This fairest creature from earliest spring 
Thus moved through the garden ministering 
All the sweet season of summer tide, 
And ere the first leaf looked brown — she died ! 

Part Third 

Three days the flowers of the garden fair, 
Like stars when the moon is awakened, were, 
Or the waves of °Baiae, ere luminous 
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius. . 

And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant 

Felt the sound of the funeral chant, 180 

And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow. 

And the sobs of the mourners deep and low ; 

The weary sound and the heavy breath. 
And the silent motions of passing death, 



30 THE SENSITIVE PLANT 

And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank. 
Sent through the pores of the coffin plank ; 



I 



The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass. 
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass; 
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, 
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan. 190 

The garden, once fair, became cold and foul. 
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul. 
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep, 
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap 
To make men tremble who never weep. 

Swift summer into the autumn flowed, 
And frost in the mist of the morning rode. 
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright, 
Mocking the spoil of the secret night. 

The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, 200 

Paved the turf and the moss below. 
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, 
Like the head and the skin of a dying man. 

And Indian plants, of scent and hue 
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew. 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 31 

Leaf by leaf, day after day, 

Were massed into the common clay. 

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red. 
And white with the whiteness of what is dead. 
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed ; 210 

Their whistling noise made the birds aghast. 

And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds, 
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds. 
Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, 
Which rotted into the earth with them. 

The water-blooms under the rivulet 
Fell from the stalks on which they were set ; 
And the eddies drove them here and there, 
As the winds did those of the upper air. 

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks, 220 
Were bent and tangled across the walks ; 
And the leafless network of parasite bowers 
Massed into ruin ; and all sweet flowers. 

Between the time of the wind and the snow, 

All loathliest weeds began to grow, 

Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck. 

Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's back. 



32 THE SENSITIVE PLANT 

And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, 
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, 
Stretched out its long and hollow shank, 
And stifled the air till the dead wind stank. 

And plants at whose names the verse feels loath, 
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth. 
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue. 
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. 

And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould 
Started like mist from the wet ground cold ; 
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead 
With a spirit of growth had been animated ! 

Their moss rotted off them flake by flake, 
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake, 
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, 
Infecting the winds that wander by. 

Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum. 

Made the running rivulet thick and dumb. 

And at its outlet flags huge as stakes 

Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes. 

And hour by hour, when the air was still, 
The vapors arose which have strength to kill : 



240 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 33 

At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt, 250 
At night they were darkness no star could melt. 

And unctuous meteors from spray to spray 
Crept and flitted in broad noonday 
Unseen ; every branch on which they alit 
By a venomous blight was burned and bit. 

The Sensitive Plant like one forbid 
Wept, and the tears within each lid 
Of its folded leaves which together grew 
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. 

For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon 260 
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn ; 
The sap shrank to the root through every pore, 
As blood to a heart that will beat no more. 

For winter came : the wind was his whip: 
One choppy finger was on his lip : 
He had torn the cataracts from the hills 
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles ; 

His breath was a chain which without a sound 
The earth, and the air, and the water bound ; 
He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne 270 

By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone. 



34 THE SENSITIVE PLANT 

Then the weeds which were forms of living death 
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. 
Their decay and sudden flight from frost 
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost ! 

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant 
The moles and the dormice died for want; 
The birds dropped stiif from the frozen air 
And were caught in the branches naked and bare. 

First there came down a thawing rain 280 

And its dull drops froze on the boughs again, 
Then there steamed up a freezing dew 
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew ; 

And a northern whirlwind, wandering about 
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out. 
Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy and stiff, 
And snapped them off with his rigid griff. 

When winter had gone and spring came back 

The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck ; 

But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and 

darnels, 290 

Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels. 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 



Conclusion 



35 



Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that 
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat 
Ere its outward form had known decay, 
Now felt this change, I cannot say. 

Whether that lady's gentle mind. 
No longer with the form combined 
Which scattered love, as stars do light 
Found sadness, where it left delight, 

I dare not guess ; but in this life 300 

Of error, ignorance, and strife, 
Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
And we the shadows of the dream, 

It is a modest creed, and yet 
Pleasant if one considers it, 
To own that death itself must be, 
Like all the rest, a mockery. 

That garden sweet, that lady fair. 

And all sweet shapes and odor there, 

In truth have never past away : 3^0 

'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed ; not they. 



36 TO WORDSWORTH 

For love and beauty and delight, 

There is no death nor change : their might 

Exceeds our organs, which endure 

No light, being themselves obscure. 



TO WORDSWORTH 

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know 
That things depart which never may return : 
^Childhood and youth, friendship and love's hrst glow, 
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. 
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine 
Which thou too feePst, yet I alone deplore. 
°Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine 
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar : 
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood 
Above the blind and battling multitude : lo 

In honored poverty thy voice did weave 
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, — 
"Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve. 
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be. 






TO COLERIDGE 37 

TO COLERIDGE 

AAKPTSI AlOISfi nOTMON AHOTMON- 

Oh ! there are "spirits of the air, 

And genii of the evening breeze, 

And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair 

As star-beams among twilight trees : — 

Such lovely ministers to meet 

Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet 

With "mountain winds, and babbling springs, 

And moonlight seas, that are the voice 

Of these inexplicable things 

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice 

When they did answer thee ; but they 

Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away. 

And thou hast sought in starry eyes 
Beams that were never meant for thine, 
Another's wealth : — tame sacrifice 
To a fond faith ! still dost thou pine ? 
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, 
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands ? 



10 



38 TO COLERIDGE 

Ah ! wherefore didst thou build thine hope 

On the false earth's inconstancy ? ao 

Did thine own mind afford no scope 

Of love, or moving thoughts to thee ? 

That natural scenes or human smiles 

Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles. 

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled 

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted ; 

°The glory of the moon is dead ; 

Night^s ghosts and dreams have now departed ; 

Thine own soul still is true to thee, 

But changed to a °foul fiend through misery. 30 

This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever 
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs, 
Dream not to chase ; — the mad endeavor 
Would scourge thee to severer pangs. 
Be as thou art. Thy settled fate. 
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. 

MONT BLANC 

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI 

I 

The everlasting universe of things 

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, 






MONT BLANC 39 

Now dark — now glittering — now reflecting gloom — 

Now lending splendor, where from secret springs 

The source of human thought its tribute brings 

Of waters, — with a sound but half its own, 

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume 

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone. 

Where waterfalls around it leap forever. 

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river lo 

Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. 



II 

Thus thou, Eavine of Arve — dark, deep Ravine — 
Thou many-colored, many-voiced vale. 
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail 
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams : awful scene, 
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down 
From the ice gulfs that gird his secret throne. 
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame 
Of lightning through the tempest ; — thou dost lie. 
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, 20 

Children of elder time, in whose devotion 
The chainless winds still come and ever came 
To drink their odors, and their mighty swinging 
To hear — an old and solemn harmony ; 



40 MONT BLANC 

Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep 

Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil 

Robes some unsculptured image ; the strange sleep 

Which when the voices of the desert fail 

Wraps all in its own deep eternity ; — 

Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, 30 

A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame ; 

Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, 

Thou art the path of that unresting sound — 

Dizzy Ravine ! and when I gaze on thee 

I seem as in a trance sublime and strange 

To muse on my own separate fantasy. 

My own, my human mind, which passively 

Now renders and receives fast influencings. 

Holding an unremitting interchange 

With the clear universe of things around ; 40 

One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings 

Now float above thy darkness, and now rest 

Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, 

In the still cave of the witch Poesy, 

Seeking among the shadows that pass by 

Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, 

Some phantom, some faint image ; till the breast 

From which they fled recalls them, thou art there ! 



mjNT BLANO 41 



III 



Some say that gleams of a remoter world 

Visit the soul in sleep, — that death is slumber, 50 

And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber 

Of those who wake and live. — I look on high ; 

Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled 

The veil of life or death ? or do I lie 

In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep 

Spread far around and inaccessibly 

Its circles ? For the very spirit fails, 

Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep 

That vanishes among the viewless gales ! 

Far, °far above, piercing the infinite sky, 60 

Mont Blanc appears, — still, snowy, and serene — 

Its subject mountains their unearthly forms 

Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between 

Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, 

Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread 

And wind among the accumulated steeps; 

A desert peopled by the storms alone. 

Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, 

And the wolf tracks her there — how hideously 

Its shapes are heaped around ! rude, bare, and high, 70 

Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. — Is this the scene 



42 MONT BLANC 

Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young 

Ruin ? Were these their toys ? or did a sea 

Of fire envelop once this silent snow ? 

None can reply — all seems eternal now. 

The wilderness has a mysterious tongue 

Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, 

So solemn, so serene, that man may be 

But for such faith with Nature reconciled ; 

Thou hast a voice, °great Mountain, to repeal 80 

Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood 

By all, but which the wise, and great, and good 

Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. 

IV 

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, 

Ocean, and all the living things that dwell 

Within the daedal earth ; lightning and rain. 

Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane. 

The torpor of the year when feeble dreams 

Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep 

Holds every future leaf and flower; — the bound 90 

With which from that detested trance they leap ; 

The works and ways of man, their death and birth, 

And that of him and all that his may be ; 

All things that move and breathe with toil and sound 



MONT BLANC 43 

Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. 
°Power dwells apart in its tranquillity 
Remote, serene, and inaccessible: 

And this, the naked countenance of earth, 
On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains 
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep loo 

Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far 

fountains. 
Slow rolling on ; there, many a precipice. 
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power 
Have piled : dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, 
A city of death, distinct with many a tower 
And wall impregnable of beaming ice. 
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin 
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky 
Eolls its perpetual stream ; vast pines are strewing 
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil no 

Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn 

down 
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown 
The limits of the dead and living world. 
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place 
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil ; 
Their food and their retreat forever gone, 
So much of life and joy is lost. The race 



44 MONT BLANC 

Of man flies far in dread ; his work and dwelling 
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream, 
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves 
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam. 
Which from those secret chasms a tumult welling 
Meet in the vale, and one majestic Eiver, 
The breath and blood of distant lands, forever 
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, 
Breathes its swift vapors to the circling air. 



Mont Blanc yet gleams on high : — the power is 

there. 
The still and °solemn power of many sights. 
And many sounds, and much of life and death. 
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, 130 

In the lone glare of day, the snows descend 
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there. 
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, 
Or the star-beams dart through them : — Winds contend 
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath 
Rapid and strong, but silently ! Its home 
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes 
Keeps innocently, and like vapor broods 
Over the snow. The secret strength of things 



HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 45 

Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome 140 
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee ! 
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, 
If to the human mind's imaginings 
Silence and solitude were vacancy ? 
July 23, 1816. 



HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 



The awful shadow of some °unseen Power 
Floats though unseen amongst us, — visiting 
This various world with as inconstant wing 
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, — 
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain 
shower, 
It visits with inconstant glance 
Each human heart and countenance; 
Like hues and harmonies of evening, — 

Like clouds in starlight widely spread, — 
Like memory of music fled, — 10 

Like aught that for its grace may be 
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 



46 HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 



II 

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate 

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon 

Of human thought or form, — where art thou gone ? 

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state. 

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? 
Ask why the sunlight not forever 
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river. 

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, 20 
Why fear and dream and death and birth 
Cast on the daylight of this earth 
Such gloom, — why man has such a scope 

For love and hate, despondency and hope ? 

Ill 

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 
To sage or poet these responses given — 
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, 
Remain the records of their vain endeavor, 
Frail spells — whose uttered charm might not avail to 
sever, 
From all we hear and all we see, 30 

Doubt, chance, and mutability. 
Thy light alone — like mist o'er mountains driven. 



HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 47 

Or music by the night wind sent, 
Through strings of some still instrument, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 

IV 

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart 
And come, for some uncertain moments lent, 
Man were immortal, and omnipotent. 
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 40 

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his 
heart. 
Thou messenger of sympathies. 
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes — 
Thou — that to human thought art nourishment, 
Like darkness to a dying flame ! 
Depart not as thy shadow came. 
Depart not — lest the grave should be, 
Like life and fear, a dark reality. 



While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 

Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, 50 
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 



48 HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 

I called on poisonous names with which our youth is 
fed; 

I was not heard — I saw them not — 

When musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at the sweet time when winds are wooing 

All vital things that wake to bring 

News of birds and blossoming, — 

Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ; 
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy ! 60 

VI 

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 

To thee and thine — have I not kept the vow ? 
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now 
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours 
Each from his voiceless grave : they have in visioned 
bowers 
Of studious zeal or love's delight 
Outwatched with me the envious night — 
They know that never joy illumed my brow 
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 
This world from its dark slavery, ^ 70 

That thou — awful Loveliness, 
Wouldst give whatever these words cannot express. 



TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING 49 

VII 

The day becomes more solemn and serene 
When noon is past — there is a harmony 
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 
Which through the summer is not heard or seen, 
As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! 

Thus let thy power, which like the truth 

Of nature on my passive youth 
Descended, to my onward life supply 80 

Its calm — to one who worships thee. 

And every form containing thee. 

Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 
To fear himself, and love all human kind. 



TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING 



Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die. 

Perchance were death indeed ! — Constantia, turn ! 

In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie. 

Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which 
burn 

Between thy lips, are laid to sleep; 

Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odor it is yet. 



50 TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING 

And from thy touch like fire doth leap. 

Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet 
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget ! 



:^l 



II 

A breathless awe, like the swift change lo 

Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers, 
Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange. 

Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers. 
The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven 

By the enchantment of thy strain. 
And on my shoulders wings are woven, 

To follow its sublime career. 
Beyond the mighty moons that wane 

Upon the verge of nature's utmost sphere, 

Till the world's shadowy walls are past and dis- 
appear. 20 
III 

Her voice is hovering o'er my soul — it lingers 
O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings, 

The blood and life within those snowy fingers 
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. 

My brain is wild, my breath comes quick — 
The blood is listening in my frame, 

And thronging shadows, fast and thick, 



HYMN OF APOLLO 51 

Fall on my overflowing eyes ; 
My heart is quivering like a flame ; 

As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies, 30 

I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies. 

IV 

I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee. 

Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song 

Flows on, and fills all things with melody. — 
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong, 

On which, like one in trance upborne. 
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep, 

Eejoicing like a cloud of morn. 

Now 'tis the breath of summer night, 

Which when the starry waters sleep, 40 

Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright. 
Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight. 

HYMN OF APOLLO 



The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries, 

From the broad moonlight of the sky. 

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, 



52 HYMN OF APOLLO 

Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, 
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. 

II 

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, 
I walk over the mountains and the waves. 

Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ; 

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire ; the caves 

Are filled with my bright presence, and the air n 

Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. 

Ill 

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill 
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day; 

All men who do or even imagine ill 
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray 

Good minds and open actions take new might, 

Until diminished by the reign of night. 

IV 

I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers 
With their ethereal colors; the Moon's globe 20 

And the pure stars in their eternal bowers 
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe ; 



HYMN OF PAN 63 

Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine, 
Are portions of one power, which is mine. 

V 

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, 
Then with unwilling steps I wander down 

Into the clouds of the Atlantic even ; 

For grief that I depart they weep and frown : 

What look is more delightful than the smile 29 

With which I soothe them from the western isle? 

VI 

I am the eye with which the Universe 
Beholds itself and knows itself divine; 

All harmony of instrument or verse. 
All prophecy, all medicine are mine. 

All light of art or nature ; — to my song, 

Victory and praise in their own right belong. 

HYMN OF PAN 

I 
From the forests and highlands 

We come, we come; 
From the river-girt islands, 

W^here loud waves are dumb 



54 HYMN OF PAN 

Listening to my sweet pipings. 
The wind in the reeds and the rushes, 

The bees on the bells of thyme, 
The birds on the myrtle bushes, 
The cicale above in the lime, 
And the lizards below in the grass, lo 

Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 

II 

Liquid Peneus was flowing. 

And all dark Tempe lay 
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing 
The light of the dying day. 
Speeded by my sweet pipings. 
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, 

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, 
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, 20 

And the brink of the dewy caves. 
And all that did then attend and follow 
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, 
With envy of my sweet pipings. 

Ill 

I sang of the dancing stars, 
I sang of the daedal Earth, 



ARETHUSA 55 

And of Heaven — and the giant wars, 
And Love, and Death, and Birth, — 
And then I changed my pipings, — 
Singing how down the vale of Menalus 30 

I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed : 
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus! 

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed: 
All wept, as I think both ye now would. 
If envy or age had not frozen your blood. 
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. 



AKETHUSA 



**Arethusa arose 

From her couch of snows 
In the Acroceraunian mountains, — 

From cloud and from crag. 

With many a jag, 
Shepherding her bright fountains. 

She leaped down the rocks, 

With her rainbow locks 
Streaming among the streams ; — 

Her steps paved with green 10 



56 A RE THUS A 

The downward ravine 
Which slopes to the western gleams : 

And gliding and springing 

She went, ever singing, 
In murmurs as soft as sleep ; 

The earth seemed to love her^ 

And Heaven smiled above her, 
As she lingered towards the deep. 

II 

Then Alpheus bold, 

On his glacier cold, 20 

With his trident the mountains strook 

And opened a chasm 

In the rocks ; — with the spasm 
All Erymanthus shook. 

And the black south wind 

It concealed behind 
The urns of the silent snow. 

And earthquake and thunder 

Did rend in sunder 
The bars of the springs below ; 30 

The beard and the hair 

Of the River-god were 
Seen through the torrent's sweep, 



ARETHUSA 57 

As he followed the light 
Of the fleet nymph's flight 
To the brink of the Dorian deep. 

Ill 

" Oh, save me ! Oh, guide me ! 

And bid the deep hide me. 
For he grasps me now by the hair ! " 

The loud Ocean heard, 40 

To its blue depth stirred, 
And divided at her prayer ; 

And under the water 

The Earth's white daughter 
Fled like a sunny beam ; 

Behind her descended 

Her billows, unblended 
With the brackish Dorian stream: — 

Like a gloomy stain 

On the emerald main 50 

Alpheus rushed behind, — 

As an eagle pursuing 

A dove to its ruin 
Down the streams of the cloudy wind. 



58 ARETUUSA 



IV 



Under the bowers 

Where the Ocean Powers 
Sit on their pearled thrones, 

Through the coral woods 

Of the weltering floods, 
Over heaps of unvalued stones ; 60 

Through the dim beams 

Which amid the streams 
Weave a network of colored light ; 

And under the caves. 

Where the shadowy waves 
Arc as green as the forest's night : — 

Outspeeding the shark. 

And the sword-fish dark, 
Under the ocean foam. 

And up through the rifts 70 

Of the mountain clifts 
They pass to their Dorian home. 

V 

And now from their fountains 
In Enna's mountains, 
Down one vale where the morning basks, 



SONG OF PROSERPINE 59. 

Like friends once parted 

Grown single-hearted, 
They ply their watery tasks. 

At sunrise they leap 

From their cradles steep 80 

In the cave of the shelving hill j 

At noontide they flow 

Through the woods below 
And the meadows of Asphodel ; 

And at night they sleep 

In the rocking deep 
Beneath the Ortygian shore ; — 

Like spirits that lie 

In the azure sky 
When they love but live no more. 90 

SONG OF PROSEHPINE 

WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA 



Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth, 
Thou from whose immortal bosom, 

Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, 
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom. 



60 SPIRIT OF DELIGHT 

Breathe thine influence most divine 
On thine own child, Proserpine. 

II 

If with mists of evening dew 

Thou dost nourish these young flowers 

Till they grow, in scent and hue. 

Fairest children of the hours, lo 

Breathe thine influence most divine 
On thine own child, Proserpine. 

SONG 



Barely, rarely, comest thou, 

Spirit of Delight ! 
Wherefore hast thou left me now 

Many a day and night ? 
Many a weary night and day 
'Tis since thou art fled away. 

II 

How shall ever one like me 
Win thee back again ? 



SPIRIT OF DELIGHT 61 

With the joyous and the free 

Thou wilt scoff at pain. lo 

Spirit false ! thou hast forgot 
All but those who need thee not. 

Ill 

As a lizard with the shad 

Of a trembling leaf, 
Thou with sorrow art dismayed ; 

Even the sighs of grief 
Keproach thee, that thou art not near, 
And reproach thou wilt not hear. 

IV 

Let me set my mournful ditty 

To a merry measure. 
Thou wilt never come for pity. 

Thou wilt come for pleasure. 
Pity then will cut away 
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. 



I love all that thou lovest. 

Spirit of Delight ! 
The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed. 



62 SPIRIT OF DELIGHT 

And the starry night ; 
Autumn evening, and the morn 
When the golden mists are born. 30 

VI 

I love qnow and all the forms 

Of the radiant frost ; 
I love waves, and winds, and storms, 

Every thing almost 
Which is Nature's, and may be 
Untainted by man's misery. 

VII 

I love tranquil solitude, 

And such society 
As is quiet, wise, and good ; 

Between thee and me 40 

What difference ? but thou dost possess 
The things I seek, not love them less. 

VIII 

I love Love — though he has wings, 

And like light can flee. 
But above all other things, 

Spirit, I love thee — 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS 63 

Thou art love and life ! Oh come, 
Make once more my heart thy home. 



TO 



Music, when soft voices die. 
Vibrates in the memory — 
Odors, when sweet violets sicken. 
Live within the sense they quicken. 

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead. 
Are heaped for the beloved's bed ; 
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone 
Love itself shall slumber on. 

LINES 

WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 

October, 1818 

Many a green isle needs must be 
In the deep wide sea of misery, 
Or the mariner, worn and wan, 
Kever thus could voyage on 
Day and night, and night and day, 



64 THE ELQANEAN HILLS 

Drifting on his dreary way, 

With the solid darkness black 

Closing round his vessel's track ; 

Whilst above, the sunless sky, 

Big with clouds, hangs heavily, lo 

And behind the tempest fleet 

Hurries on with lightning feet, 

Eiving sail, and cord, and plank. 

Till the ship has almost drank 

Death from the o'er-brimming deep ; 

And sinks down, down, like that sleep 

When the dreamer seems to be 

Weltering through eternity ; 

Atfd the dim low line before 

Of a dark and distant shore 20 

Still recedes, as ever still 

Longing with divided will, 

But no power to seek or shun, 

He is ever drifted on 

O'er the unreposing wave 

To the haven of the grave. 

What, if there no friends will greet ; 

What, if there no heart will meet 

His with love's impatient beat ; 

Wander wheresoe'er he may, 30 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS (66 

Can he dream before that day 

To find refuge from distress 

In friendship's smile, in love's caress ? 

Then 'twill wreak him little woe 

Whether such there be or no : 

Senseless is the breast, and cold, 

Which relenting love would fold ; 

Bloodless are the veins and chill 

Which the pulse of pain did fill; 

Every little living nerve 40 

That from bitter words did swerve 

Round the tortured lips and brow, 

Are like sapless leaflets now 

Frozen upon December's bough. 

On the beach of a northern sea 

Which tempests shake eternally, 

As once the wretch there lay to sleep, 

Lies a solitary heap. 

One white skull and seven dry bones 

On the margin of the stones, 50 

Where a few gray rushes stand 

Boundaries of the sea and land : 

Nor is heard one voice of wail 

But the sea-mews, as they sail 



66 THE EUGANEAN HILLS 

O'er the billows of the gale ; 

Or the whirlwind up and down 

Howling, like a slaughtered town, 

When a king in glory rides 

Through the pomp of fratricides : 

Those unburied bones around 60 

There is many a mournful sound 

There is no lament for him, 

Like a sunless vapor, dim. 

Who once clothed with life and thought 

What now moves nor murmurs not. 

Aye, many flowering islands lie 

In the waters of wide Agony : 

To such a one this morn was led, 

My bark by soft winds piloted : 

Mid the mountains Euganean 70 

I stood listening to the psean, 

With which the legioned rooks did hail 

The sun's uprise majestical ; 

Gathering round with wings all hoar, 

Through the dewy mist they soar 

Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven 

Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, 

Elecked with fire and azure, lie 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS 67 

In the unfathomable sky, 

So their plumes of purple grain, 80 

Starred with drops of golden rain, 

Gleam above the sunlight woods, 

As in silent multitudes 

On the morning's fitful gale 

Through the broken mist they sail. 

And the vapors cloven and gleaming 

Follow down the dark steep streaming. 

Till all is bright, and clear, and still, 

Kound the solitary hill. 

Beneath is spread like a green sea 90 

The waveless plain of Lombardy, 

Bounded by the vaporous air, 

Islanded by cities fair ; 

Underneath day's azure eyes 

Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, 

A peopled labyrinth of walls, 

Amphitrite's destined halls. 

Which her hoary sire now paves 

With his blue and beaming waves. 

Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, 100 

Broad, red, radiant, half reclined 

On the level quivering line 



68 THE EUGANEAN HILLS 

Of the waters crystalline ; 
And before that chasm of light, 
As within a furnace bright, 
Column, tower, and dome, and spire. 
Shine like obelisks of fire. 
Pointing with inconstant motion 
From the altar of dark ocean 
To the sapphire-tinted skies ; 
As the flames of sacrifice 
From the marble shrines did rise. 
As to pierce the dome of gold 
Where Apollo spoke of old. 

Sun-girt City, thou hast been 
"Ocean's child, and then his queen ; 
Now is come a darker day. 
And thou soon must be his prey. 
If the power that raised thee here 
Hallow so thy watery bier. 
A less drear ruin then than now. 
With thy conquest-branded brow 
Stooping to the °slave of slaves 
From thy throne, among the waves 
Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew 
Flies, as once before it flew, 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS 69 

O'er thine isles depopulate, 

And all is in its ancient state, 

Save where many a palace gate 

With green sea-flowers overgrown 130 

Like a rock of ocean's own, 

Topples o'er the abandoned sea 

As the tides change sullenly. 

The fisher on his watery way. 

Wandering at the close of day, 

Will spread his sail and seize his oar 

Till he pass the gloomy shore, 

Lest thy dead should, from their sleep 

Bursting o'er the starlight deep, 

Lead a rapid masque of death 140 

O'er the waters of his path. 

Those who alone thy towers behold 

Quivering through aerial gold, 

As I now behold them here. 

Would imagine not they were 

Sepulchres, where human forms, 

Like pollution-nourished worms 

To the corpse of greatness cling, 

Murdered, and now mouldering : 

But if Freedom should awake 15© 



70 THE EUGANEAN HILLS 

In her omnipotence, and shake 

From the °Celtic Anarch's hold 

All the keys of dungeons cold, 

Where a hundred cities lie 

Chained like thee, ingloriously, 

Thou and all thy sister band 

Might adorn this sunny land, 

Twining °memories of old time 

With new virtues more sublime ; 

If not, perish thou and they, i6o 

Clouds which stain truth's rising day 

By her sun consumed away. 

Earth can spare ye : while like flowers, 

In the waste of years and hours. 

From your dust new nations spring 

With more kindly blossoming. 

Perish — let there only be 

Floating o'er thy heartless sea 

As the garment of thy sky 

Clothes the world immortally, 170 

One remembrance, more sublime 

Than the tattered pall of time, 

Which scarce hides thy visage wan ; — 

That a °tempest-cleaving Swan 

Of the songs of Albion^ 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS 71 

Driven from his ancestral streams 

By the might of °evil dreams, 

Found a nest in thee ; and Ocean 

Welcomed him with such emotion 

That its joy grew his, and sprung ,80 

From his lips like music flung 

O'er a mighty thunder-fit 

Chastening terror : — what though yet 

Poesy's unfailing Kiver, 

Which through Albion winds forever 

Lashing with melodious wave 

Many a sacred Poet's grave, 

Mourn its latest nursling fled ? 

What though thou with all thy dead 

Scarce can for this fame repay 190 

Aught thine own ? oh, rather say 

Though thy sins and slaveries foul 

Overcloud a sun-like soul ? 

As the ghost of Homer clings 

Round Scamander's wasting springs ; 

As divinest Shakespere's might 

Fills Avon and the world with light 

Like omniscient power which he 

Imaged mid mortality ; 

As the love from Petrarch's urn, aoo 



72 THE EUGANEAN HILLS 

Yet amid yon hills doth burn, 

A quenchless lamp by which the heart 

Sees things unearthly ; — so thou art 

Mighty °spirit — so shall be 

The City that did refuge thee. 

Lo, the sun floats up the sky 
Like thought-winged Liberty, 
Till the universal light 
Seems to level plain and height ; 
From the sea a mist has spread, 
And the beams of morn lie dead 
On the towers of Venice now, 
Like its glory long ago. 
By the skirts of that gray cloud 
Many-domed Padua proud 
Stands, a peopled solitude. 
Mid the harvest-shining plain. 
Where the peasant heaps his grain 
In the garner of his foe, 
And the milk-white oxen slow 
With the purple vintage strain, 
Heaped upon the creaking wain. 
That the brutal Celt may swill 
Drunken sleep with savage will ; 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS 73 

And the sickle to the sword 

Lies unchanged, though many a lord, 

Like a weed whose shade is poison, 

Overgrows this region's foison, 

Sheaves of whom are ripe to come 

To destruction's harvest-home : 230 

Men must reap the things they sow. 

Force from force must ever flow. 

Or worse ; but 'tis a bitter woe 

That love or reason cannot change 

The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. 

Padua, thou within whose walls 

Those mute guests at festivals, 

Son and Mother, Death and Sin, 

Played at dice for Ezzelin, 

Till Death cried, " I win, I win ! " 240 

And Sin cursed to lose the wager, 

But Death promised, to assuage her, 

That he would petition for 

Her to be made Vice-Emperor, 

When the destined j^ears were o'er 

Over all between the Po 

And the eastern Alpine snow, 

Under the mighty Austrian. 



74 THE EUOANEAN HILLS 

Sin smiled so as Sin only can, 

And since that time, aye, long before, 250 

Both have ruled from shore to shore/ 

That incestuous pair, who follow 

Tyrants as the sun the swallow, 

As Repentance follows Crime, 

And as changes follow Time. 

In thine halls the lamp of learning, 

Padua, now no more is burning ; 

Like a meteor, whose wild way 

Is lost over the grave of day. 

It gleams betrayed and to betray: 260 

Once remotest nations came 

To adore that sacred flame. 

When it lit not many a hearth 

On this cold and gloomy earth : 

Now new fires from antique light 

Spring beneath the wide world's might ; 

But their spark lies dead in thee, 

Trampled out by tyranny. 

As the Norway woodman quells. 

In the depth of piny dells, 270 

One light flame among the brakes 

While the boundless forest shakes. 



THE EUQANEAN HILLS 75 

And its mighty trunks are torn 

By the fire thus lowly born : 

The spark beneath his feet is dead, 

He starts to see the flames it fed 

Howling through the darkened sky 

With a myriad tongues victoriously, 

And sinks down in fear : so thou, 

Tyranny ! beholdest now 280 

Light around thee, and thou hearest 

The loud flames ascend, and f earest : 

Grovel on the earth ! aye, hide 

In the dust thy purple pride ! 

Noon descends around me now : 

'Tis the noon of autumn's glow, 

When a soft and purple mist 

Like a vaporous amethyst. 

Or an air dissolved star 

Mingling light and fragrance, far 290 

From the curved horizon's bound 

To the point of heaven's profound, 

Fills the overflowing sky ; 

And the plains that silent lie 

Underneath, the leaves unsodden 

Where the infant frost has trodden. 



76 THE BUG AN BAN HILLS 

With his morning-winged feet, 

Whose bright print is gleaming yet ; 

And the red and golden vines, 

Piercing with their trellised lines 300 

The rough, dark-skirted wilderness ; 

The dun and bladed grass no less, 

Pointing from this hoary tower 

In the windless air ; the flower 

Glimmering at my feet ; the line 

Of the olive-sandalled Apennine 

In the south dimly islanded : 

And the Alps, whose snows are spread 

High between the clouds and sun ; 

And of living things each one ; 310 

And my spirit which so long 

Darkened this swift stream of song, 

Interpenetrated lie 

By the glory of the sky : 

Be it love, light, harmony, 

Odor, or the soul of all 

Which from heaven like dew doth fall 

Or the mind which feeds this verse 

Peopling the lone universe. 

Noon descends, and after noon 320 

Autumn's evening meets me soon, 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS 77 

Leading the infantine moon, 

And that one star, which to her 

Ahnost seems to minister 

Half the crimson light she brings 

From the sunset's radiant springs : 

And the soft dreams of the morn 

(Which like winged winds had borne 

To that silent isle, which lies 

Mid remembered agonies, 330 

The frail bark of this lone being,) 

Pass, to other sufferers fleeing. 

And its ancient pilot, Pain, 

Sits beside the helm again. 

Other flowering isles must be 

In the sea of life and agony : 

Other spirits float and flee 

O'er that gulf : even now,, perhaps, 

On some rock the wild wave wraps, 

With folded wings they waiting sit 340 

For my bark, to pilot it 

To some calm and blooming cove, 

Where for me, and those I love, 

May a windless bower be built. 

Far from passion, pain, and guilt, 



78 THE EUGANEAN HILLS 

In a dell mid lawny hills, 

Which the wild sea-murmur fills, 

And soft sunshine, and the sound 

Of old forests echoing round, 

And the light and smell divine 350 

Of all flowers that breathe and shine : 

We may live so happy there, 

That the spirits of the air, 

Envying us, may even entice 

To our healing paradise 

The polluting multitude ; 

But their rage would be subdued 

By that clime divine and calm, 

And the wind whose wings rain balm 

On the uplifted soul, and leaves 360 

Under which the bright sea heaves ; 

While each breathless interval 

In their whisperings musical 

The inspired soul supplies 

With its own deep melodies, 

And the love which heals all strife 

Circling, like the breath of life, 

All things in that sweet abode 

With its own mild brotherhood : 

They, not it, would change ; and soon 370 



OZYMANDIAS 79 

Every sprite beneath the moon 
Would repent its envy vain, 
And the earth grow young again. 

OZYMANDIAS 

I MET a traveller from an ^antique land 

Who said : " Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, 

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown. 

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command. 

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed : 

And on the pedestal these words appear : 

' My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : lo 

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair ! ' 

Nothing beside remains. Eound the decay 

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare 

The lone and level sands stretch °far away." 



80 THE COLD EARTH ULEPT BELOW 

LINES 



The cold earth slept below, 

Above the cold sky shone ; 
And all around, with a chilling sound, 
From caves of ice and fields of snow. 
The breath of night like death did flow 

Beneath the sinking moon. 

II 

The wintry hedge was black, 

The green grass was not seen, 
The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast, 
Whose roots, beside the pathway track, i 

Had bound their folds o'er many a crack, 

Which the frost had made between. 

Ill 

Thine eyes glowed in the glare 

Of the moon's dying light ; 
As a fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream. 
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there, 
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair, 

That shook in the wind of night. 



THE WORLD'S WANDERERS 81 

IV 

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved — 

The wind made thy bosom chill — 20 

The night did shed on thy dear head 
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie 
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky 
Might visit thee at will. 

THE WOKLD'S WANDEREES 



Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light 
Speed thee in thy fiery flight. 
In what cavern of the night 

Will thy pinions close now ? 

II 

Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray 
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, 
In what depth of night or day 

Seekest thou repose now ? 

Ill 

Weary wind, who wanderest 

Like the world's rejected guest, 10 



82 SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD 

Hast thou still some secret nest 
On the tree or billow ? 



A SUMMER EVENING CHUECHYAED 

LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE 

The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere 

Each vapor that obscured the sunset's ray ; 

And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair 

In °duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day : 

Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, 

Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. 

They breathe their spells towards the departing day, 
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea ; 
Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway, 
Responding to the charm with its own mystery. lo 
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass 
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. 

Thou too, aerial Pile ! whose pinnacles 
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, 
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, 
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, 



SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD 83 

Around whose lessening and invisible height 
Gather among the stars the clouds of night. 

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres : 
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound 20 
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, 
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things 

around, 
And mingling with the still night and mute sky 
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly. 

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild 

And terrorless as this serenest night : 

Here could I hope, like some inquiring child 

Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human 

sight 
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep 
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. 30 

TIME 

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, 
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe 

Are brackish with the salt of human tears ! 

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow 

Claspest the limits of mortality ! 



84 TIME 

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, 
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore ; 
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, 

Who shall put forth on thee. 

Unfathomable Sea? 

TO NIGHT 



Swiftly walk over the western wave, 

Spirit of Night ! 
Out of the misty eastern cave. 
Where all the long and lone daylight. 
Thou wo vest dreams of joy and fear, 
Which make thee terrible and dear, — 

Swift be thy flight ! 

II 

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, 

Star-inwrought ! 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day 
Kiss her until she be wearied out. 
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, 
Touching all with thine opiate wand — 

Come, long sought ! 



TO NIGHT 85 

III 

When I arose and saw the dawn, 

I sighed for thee ; 
When light rode high, and the dew was gone, 
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree. 
And the weary day turned to his rest, 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 20 

I sighed for thee. 

IV 

Thy brother Death came, and cried, 

" Wouldst thou me ? " 
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed. 
Murmured like a noontide bee, 
Shall I nestle near thy side ? 
" Wouldst thou me ? " — And I replied, 

" No, not thee ! " 

V 

Death will come when thou art dead. 

Soon, too soon — 30 

Sleep will come when thou art fled ; 
Of neither would I ask the boon 
I ask of thee, beloved Night — 
Swift be thine approaching flight. 

Come soon, soon! 



86 S LAMENT 



A LAMENT 



I 

WORLD ! life ! time ! 
On whose last steps I climb 

Trembling at that where I had stood before : 
When will return the glory of your prime ? 
No more — oh, never more ! 

II 

Out of the day and night 
A joy has taken flight; 

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, 
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight 

No more — oh, never more ! lo 

STANZAS 

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES 
I 

The sun is warm, the sky is clear. 

The waves are dancing fast and bright, 

Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 
The purple noon's transparent might, 



STANZAS 87 

The breath of the moist earth is light, 
Around its unexpanded buds; 

Like many a voice of one delight, 
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods. 
The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's. 

II 

I see the Deep's untrampled floor lo 

With green and purple seaweeds strown ; 
I see the waves upon the shore. 

Like lights dissolved in star-showers, thrown: 

I sit upon the sands alone, 
The lightning of the noontide ocean 

Is flashing round me, and a tone 
Arises from its measured motion. 
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion. 

Ill 

,Alas! I have nor hope nor health, 

Nor piece within nor calm around, 20 

Nor that content surpassing wealth 

The sage in meditation found, 

And walked with inward glory crowned — 
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 

Others I see whom these surround — 



8i8L STANZAS 

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ; — 
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 

IV 

Yet now despair itself is mild, 

Even as the winds and waters are ; 
I could lie down like a tired child, 30 

And weep away the life of care 

Which I have borne and yet must bear, 
Till death like sleep might steal on me, 

And I might feel in the warm air 
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea , 

Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 



Some might lament that I were cold. 

As I, when this sweet day is gone. 
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, 

Insults with this untimely moan ; 40 

They might lament — for I am one 
Whom men love not, — and yet regret. 

Unlike this day, which, when the sun 
Shall on its stainless glory set. 
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. 



SONGS 89 

SONGS FROM PKOMETHEUS UNBOUND 

A VOICE IN THE AIR SINGING 

Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle 

With their love the breath between them j 

And thy smiles before they dwindle 

Make the cold air fire ; then screen them 

In those looks, where whoso gazes 

Faints, entangled in their mazes. 

Child of Light ! thy limbs are burning 

Through the vest which seems to hide them ; 

As the radiant lines of morning 

Through the clouds ere they divide them ; lo 

And this atmosphere divinest 

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 

Fair are others ; none beholds thee, 

But thy voice sounds low and tender 
Like the fairest, for it folds thee 

From the sight, that liquid splendor, 
And all feel, yet see thee never^ 
As I feel now, lost forever ! 



90 SONGS 

Lamp of Earth ! where'er thou movest 

Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, 20 

And the soul of whom thou lovest 
Walk upon the winds with lightness, 

Till they fail, as I am failing, 

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing ! 

ASIA 

My soul is an enchanted boat, 

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float 
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing ; 

And thine doth like an angel sit 

Beside a helm conducting it, 
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. 

It seems to float ever, forever, 

Upon that many-winding river. 

Between mountains, woods, abysses, 

A paradise of wildernesses ! 10 

Till, like one in slumber bound, 
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around. 
Into a sea profound, of everspreading sound : 

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions 
In music's most serene dominions ; 
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven. 



SONGS 91 

And we sail on, away, afar, 

Without a course, without a star, 
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven ; 

Till through Elysian garden islets 20 

By thee, most beautiful of pilots. 

Where never mortal pinnance glided, 

The boat of my desire is guided : 
Realms where the air we breathe is love. 
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move, 
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above. 

We have past Age's icy caves, 

And Manhood's dark and tossing waves. 
And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray : 

Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee 30 

Of shadow-peopled Infancy, 
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day ; 

A paradise of vaulted bowers, 

Lit by downward-gazing flowers. 

And watery paths that wind between 

Wildernesses calm and green, 
Peopled by shapes too bright to see. 
And rest, having beheld ; somewhat like thee ; 
Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously ! 



92 ADONAIS 



ADONAIS 

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS, AUTHOR 
OF ENDYMION, HYPERION, ETC. 

AcTT'/ip TTplv fx^v iXafXTres ivl ^CooiaLv iQos ' 

ISvp 5^ davcdv Xd/jLirets ^ffirepos iv (pdifxevois. 

— Plato. 

PREFACE 

^dp/xaKov ijXOe, Bluv, ttotI (rhv aTdfxa, (pdpfxaKov eldes. 
Hcos rev Tots xeiXecrci TroT^dpa/xe, kovk iyXvKavdr] ; 
TLs 5^ PpoTos ToaaovTov dva/xepoi, ■^ Kepdaai rot, 
"H 5ovvai \a\iovTi. jb (pdp/xaKOv ; eKcpvyev uddv. 

— MoscHus, Epitaph. Bion, 



I WEEP for °Adonais — he is dead ! 
Oh, weep for Adonais ! though our tears 
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head ! 
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years 
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers. 
And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: "With me 
Died Adonais ; till the future dares 
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be 
An echo and a light unto eternity ! '' 



ADONAIS 93 



II 



Where wert thou, °mighty Mother, when he lay, lo 
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies 
In darkness ? where was lorn Urania 
When Adonais died ? With veiled eyes, 
Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise 
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, 
Kekindled all the fading melodies. 
With which, like flowers that mock the corse be- 
neath. 
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death. 

Ill 

Oh, weep for Adonais — he is dead! 
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep ! 20 

Yet wherefore ? Quench within their burning bed 
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep 
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep ; 
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair 
Descend ; — oh, dream not that the amorous Deep 
Will yet restore him to the vital air; 
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our de- 
spair. 



94 ADONAIS 



IV 



Most musical of mourners, weep again ! 
Lament anew, Urania I — He died, 
Who was the °Sire of an immortal strain, 30 

Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride, 
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide. 
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite 
Of lust and blood ; he went, unterrified, 
Into the gulf of death ; but his clear Sprite 
Yet reigns o'er earth the third among the sons of 
light. 



Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
Not all to that bright station dared to climb ; 
And happier they their happiness who knew. 
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time 40 
In which suns perished ; others more sublime, 
Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, 
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime ; 
And some yet live, treading the thorny road. 
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene 
abode. 



ADONAIS 95 

VI 

But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished, 
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew. 
Like a pale flower by some °sad maiden cherished. 
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew ; 
Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 50 

Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last. 
The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew 
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste ; 
The broken lily lies — the storm is overpassed. 

VII 

To that high Capital, where kingly Death 
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, 
He came ; and bought, with price of purest breath, 
A grave among the eternal. — Come away ! 
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day 
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof ! while still 60 

He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay ; 
Awake him not ! surely he takes his fill 
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. 

VIII 

He will awake no more, oh, never more ! — 
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace, 



96 ABONAIS 

The shadow of white Death, and at the door 
Invisible Corruption waits to trace 
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place ; 
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe 
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 70 

So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law 
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. 

IX 

Oh, weep for Adonais ! — the °quick Dreams, 
The passion-winged Ministers of thought, 
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams 
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught 
The love which was its music, wander not, — 
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain. 
But droop there, whence they sprung ; and mourn 

their lot 
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet 80 

pain, 
They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again. 



And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head, 
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries j 
" Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead ; 



ADONAIS 97 

See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies 
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain." 
Lost angel of a ruined Paradise ! 
She knew not 'twas her own ; as with no stain 
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. 90 

XI 

One from a lucid urn of starry dew 
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them ; 
Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw 
The wreath upon him, like an anadem. 
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem ; 
Another in her wilful grief would break 
Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem 
A greater loss with one which was more weak ; 
And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. 

XII 

Another Splendor on his mouth alit, 100 

That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath 
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, 
And pass into the panting heart beneath 
With lightning and with music : the damp death 
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips ; 

H 



98 ADONAIS 

And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath 
Of moonlight vapor, which the cold night clips, 
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its 
eclipse. 

XIII 

And others came — Desires and Adorations, 
AVinged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, no 

Splendors, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations 
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Fantasies ; 
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam 
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes. 
Came in slow pomp ; — the moving pomp might seem 
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. 

XIV 

All he had loved, and moulded into thought. 
From shape, and hue, and odor, and sweet sound, 
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 120 

Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound. 
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, 
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day ; 
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned. 
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay. 
And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. 



ADONAIS 99 

XV 

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, 
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay, 
And will no more reply to winds or fountains, 129 
Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray. 
Or herdman's horn, or bell at closing day; 
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear 
Than those for whose disdain she pined away 
Into a shadow of all sounds : — a drear 
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. 

XVI 

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw 

down 
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were. 
Or they dead leaves ; since her delight is flown 
For whom should she have waked the sullen year ? 
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear 140 

Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both 
Thou, Adonais : wan they stand and sere 
Amid the faint companions of their youth. 
With dew all turned to tears, odor, to sighing ruth. 



100 AD0NAI8 

XVII 

Thy spirit's sister, the °lorn nightingale, 
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain ; 
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale 
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain 
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain. 
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, 150 
As Albion wails for thee : the °curse of Cain 
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, 
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest ! 

XVIII 

Ah, woe is me ! Winter is come and gone, 

But grief returns with the revolving year ; 

The airs and streams renew their joyous tone; 

The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear ; 

Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' 

bier ; 
The amorous birds now pair in every brake, 
And build their mossy homes in field and brere ; 160 
And the green lizard, and the golden snake. 
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. 



ADONAIS 101 

XIX 

Through wood and stream and field and hill and 

Ocean 
A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst 
As it has ever done, with change and motion, 
From the great morning of the world when first 
God dawned on Chaos ; in its stream immersed 
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light ; 
All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst ; 
Diffuse themselves ; and spend in love's delight, 170 
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. 

XX 

The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender 
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath ; 
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendor 
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death 
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath ; 
Naught we know, dies. Shall °that alone which 

knows 
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath 
By sightless lightning? — the "intense atom glows 
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. 180 



102 ADONAIS 



XXI 



Alas ! that all we loved of him should be, 

But for our grief, as if it had not been. 

And grief itself be mortal ! Woe is me ! 

Whence are we, and why are we ? of what scene 

The actors or spectators ? Great and mean 

Meet massed in death, who lends what life must 

borrow. 
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, 
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow. 
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to 

sorrow. 

XXII 

He will awake no more, oh, never more ! 190 

" Wake thou,'' cried Misery, " childless Mother, rise 
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core, 
A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs." 
And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes. 
And all the Echoes whom their sister's song 
Had held in holy silence, cried : " Arise ! " 
Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung. 
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendor sprung. 



ADONAIS 103 



XXIII 



She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs 
Out of the East, and follows wild and drear 200 

The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, 
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, 
Has left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear 
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania ; 
So saddened round her like an atmosphere 
Of stormy mist ; so swept her on her way 
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. 

XXIV 

Out of her secret Paradise she sped, 

Through camps and cities rough with stone, and 

steel, 
And human hearts, which to her airy tread 210 

Yielding not, wounded the invisible 
Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell : 
And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than 

they 
Kent the soft Form they never could repel, 
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, 
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. 



104 ADONAIS 

XXV 

In the death chamber for a moment Death, 
Shamed by the presence of that living Might, 
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath 
Revisited those lips, and life's pale light 220 

Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. 
" Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, 
As silent lightning leaves the starless night ! 
Leave me not ! " cried Urania : her distress 
Eoused Death : Death rose and smiled, and met her 
vain caress. 

XXVI 

" Stay yet awhile ! speak to me once again ; 

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live ; 

And in my heartless breast and burning brain 

That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else sur- 
vive. 

With food of saddest memory kept alive, 230 

Now thou art dead, as if it were a part 

Of thee, my Adonais ! I would give 

All that I am to be as thou now art ! 
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence de- 
part I 



ADOKAIS 105 



XXVII 



'^ gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 

Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men 

Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty 

heart 
Dare the °unpastured dragon in his den ? 
Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then 
°Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear ? 240 
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when 
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, 
The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like 

deer. 

XXVIII 

" The herded wolves, bold only to pursue ; 
The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead ; 
The vultures to the conqueror's banner true 
Who feed where Desolation first has fed. 
And whose wings rain contagion ; — how they fled. 
When like Apollo, from his golden bow, 
The °Pythian of the age one arrow sped 250 

And smiled! — The spoilers tempt no second blow. 
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying 
low. - 



106 ADONAIS 



XXIX 



" The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn ; 
He sets, -and each ephemeral insect then 
Is gathered into death without a dawn, 
And the immortal stars awake again ; 
So is it in the world of living men : 
A god-like mind soars forth, in its delight 
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when 
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its 
light 260 

Leave to its kindred lamp the spirit's awful night." 

XXX 

Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds 

came. 
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent ; 
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 
Over his living head like Heaven is bent. 
An early but enduring monument. 
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song 
In °sorrow ; from her wilds lerne sent 
The °sweetest lyrists of her saddest wrong, 
And love taught grief to fall like music from his 

tongue. 270 



ADONAIS 107 

XXXI 

Midst others of less note, came °one frail Form, 
A phantom among men ; companionless. 
As the last cloud of an expiring storm 
Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess, 
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, 
Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray 
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness. 
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, 
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their 
prey. 

XXXII 

A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift — 280 

A Love in desolation masked ; — a Power 
Girt round with weakness ; — it can scarce uplift 
The weight of the superincumbent hour ; 
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
A breaking billow ; — even whilst we speak 
Is it not broken ? On the withering flower 
The killing sun smiles brightly : on a cheek 
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may 
break. 



108 ADONAIS 



XXXIII 



His head was bound with pansies overblown, 
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue ; 290 
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone. 
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew 
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, 
Vibrated, as the ever beating heart 
Shook the weak hand that grasped it ; of that crew 
He came the last, neglected and apart ; 
A "herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart. 

XXXIV 

. All stood aloof, and at his partial moan 
Smiled through their tears ; well knew that gentle 

band 
Who in another's fate now wept his own ; 300 

As in the accents of an unknown land, 
He sung new sorrow ; sad Urania scanned 
The Stranger's mien, and murmured : " Who art 

thou?" 
He answered not, but with a sudden hand 
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, 
Which was like Cain's or Christ's. Oh, that it should 

be so! 



ADONAIS 109 



XXXV 



What °sbfter voice is hushed over the dead ? 
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown? 
What form leans sadly o'er the white deathbed, 
, In mockery of monumental stone, 310 

The heavy heart heaving without a moan ? 
If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, 
Taught, soothed, loved, honored the departed 

one ; 
Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs 
The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice. 

XXXVI 

Our Adonais has drunk poison — oh ! 
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown 
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe ? 
The nameless worm would now itself disown: 
It felt, yet could escape the magic tone 320 

Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong. 
But what was howling in one breast alone, 
Silent with expectation of the song. 
Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre 
_ unstrung. 



110 ADONAIS 

XXXVII 

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame ! 
Live ! fear no heavier chastisement from me, 
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name ! 
But be thyself, and know thyself to be ! 
And ever at thy season be thou free 
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow: 330 

Eemorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee ; 
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, 
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt — as now. 

XXXVIII 

Kor let us weep that our delight is fled 
Far from these carrion kites that scream below ; 
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead ; 
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. — 
Dust to the dust ! but the pure spirit shall flow 
Back to the burning fountain whence it came, 
A ^portion of the Eternal, which must glow 340 

Through time and change, unquenchably the same. 
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of 
shame. 

XXXIX 

Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — 
He hath awakened from the dream of life — 



ADONAIS 111 

'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep 
With phantoms an unprofitable strife. 
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife 
Invulnerable nothings. — We decay 
Like corpses in a charnel ; fear and grief 
' Convulse us and consume us day by day, 350 

And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living 
clay. 

XL 

He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; 
Envy and calumny and hate and pain, 
And that unrest, which men miscall delight, 
Can touch him not and torture not again ; 
From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
He is °secure, and now can never mourn 
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain ; 
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, 
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 360 

XLI 

He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he ; 
Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young Dawn, 
Turn all thy dew to splendor, for from thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan ! 



112. AD ON A IS 

Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare 
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair ! 

XLII 

He is made one with Nature : there is heard 370 
His voice in all her music, from the moan 
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
He is a presence to be felt and known 
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
Which has withdrawn his being to its own ; 
Which wields the world with never wearied love, 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 

XLIII 

He is a portion of the loveliness 
Which once he made more lovely : he doth bear 380 
His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress 
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling 

there 
All new successions to the forms they wear ; 
Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight 
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; . . 



ADONAIS 113 

And bursting in its beauty and its might 
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. 

XLIV 

The splendors of the firmament of time 
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; 
Like stars to their appointed height they climb, 390 
And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 
Lifts a young heart above its °mortal lair, 
And love and life contend in it, for what 
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there 
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 

XLV 

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 

Eose from their thrones, built beyond mortal 

thought, 
Far in the Unapi^arent. °Chatterton 
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 400 

Yet faded from him ; ^Sidney, as he fought 
And as he fell and as he lived and loved 
Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 
Arose ; and °Lucan, by his death approved r - 
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 



114 ADONAIS 

XL VI 

And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, 
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die 
So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
Kose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
^' Thou art become as one of us," they cry, 410 

" It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
Swung blind in unascended majesty, 
Silent alone, amid an °Heaven of Song. 
Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our 
throng ! " 

XLVII 

Who mourns for Adonais ? Oh, come forth. 
Fond °wretch ! and know thyself and him aright. 
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth ; 
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light 
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
Satiate the void circumference : then shrink 420 

Even to a point within our day and night ; 
And keep thj^ heart light lest it make thee sink 
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the 
brink. 



ADONAIS 115 



XL VIII 



Or go to Kome, which is the sepulchre 
Oh! not of him, but of our joy : 'tis naught 
That ages, empires, and religions there 
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought ; 
For such as he can lend, — they borrow not 
Glory from those who made the world their prey ; 
And he is gathered to the kings of thought 430 

Who waged contention with their time's decay, 
And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 

XLIX 

Go thou to Kome, — at once the Paradise, 
The grave, the city, and the wilderness ; 
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise. 
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress 
The bones of Desolation's nakedness 
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access 
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead, 440 
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. 

L 

And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time 
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand : 



116 ADONAIS 

And one °keen pyramid with wedge sublime, 
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 
This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath, 
A field is spread, on which a newer band 
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death 
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished 
breath. 45° 

LI 

Here pause : these graves are all too young as yet 
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned 
Its charge to each ; and if the seal is set. 
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind. 
Break it not thou ! too surely shalt thou find 
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home. 
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind 
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. 
What Adonais is, why fear we to become ? 

LII 

The One remains, the many change and pass ; 460 
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly ; 
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 



ADONAIS ii? 

Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die, 
If" thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek ! 
Follow where all is fled ! — Rome's azure sky, -' 
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak 
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak 

LTII 

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart ? 
Thy hopes are gone before : from all things here 470 
They have departed ; thou shouldst now depart ! 
A light is passed from the revolving year. 
And man, and woman; and what still is dear 
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. 
The soft sky smiles, — the low wind whispers near ; 
'Tis Adonais calls ! oh, hasten thither, 
No more let Life divide what Death can join together. 

LIV 

That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, 
That Beauty in which all things work and move, 
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse 480 

Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 
Which through the web of being blindly wove 
By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 



118 ADONAIS 

Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
The fire for which all thirst ; now beams on me, 
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 

LV 

The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven 
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng 
Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 490 
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar ; 
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 



POEMS FROM KEATS 
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 



My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk : 
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot. 
But being too happy in thine happiness, — 
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 

Singest of summer in full-throated case. lo 

II 

0, for a draught of vintage ! that hath been 
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, 

Tasting of Flora and the country green, 

Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth 

119 



120 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 

0, for a beaker full of the warm South, 
Full of the true, the blushful °Hippocrene, 
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
And purple-stained mouth ; 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen. 
And with thee fade away into the forest dim : 20 

III 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 

What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret 

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan j 
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs. 

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; 
^tere but to think is to be full of sorrow 
And leaden-eyed despairs, 
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 30 

IV 

Away! away! fori will fly to thee. 

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 

But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards : 



ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 121 

Already with thee ! tender is the night, 

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, 
Clustered around by all her starry Pays ; 
But here there is no light. 
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy 
ways. 40 

V 

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, . 

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 

Wherewith the seasonable month endows 

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild ; 

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine ; 

Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves ; 

And mid-May's eldest child. 

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine. 

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50 

VI 

Darkling I listen ; and for many a time 

I have been half in love with easeful Death, 

Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, 
To take into the air my quiet breath j 



122 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 

Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
In such an ecstasy ! 
Still would st thou sing, and I have ears in vain — 
To thy high requiem become a sod. 60 

VII 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird ! 

No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
The same that oft-times hath 
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70 

VIII 

Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 

To toll me back from thee to my sole self ! 

Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well 
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. 

Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades 



ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 123 

Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
Up the hill-side ; and now 'tis buried deep 
In the next valley -glades : 

Was it a vision, or a waking dream ? 

Fled is that music : — Do I wake or sleep ? 80 

ODE ON A GRECIAN UEN 



Thou still unravished bride of quietness ! 

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 

Of deities or mortals, or of both. 
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? 

What men or gods are these ? W^hat maidens loath ? 
What mad pursuit ? What struggle to escape ? 

What pipes and timbrels ? What wild ecstasy ? 10 

II 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 

Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, 



124 ODE TO A GRECIAN URN 

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone : 
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; 
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 
Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve; 
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair ! 20 

III 

Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that cannot shed 

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu ; 
And, happy melodist, unwearied. 

Forever piping songs forever new ; 
More happy love ! more happy, happy love ! 

Forever warm and still to be enjoyed. 
Forever panting, and forever young ; 
All breathing human passion far above. 

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed, 
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30 

IV 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 

To what green altar, mysterious priest, 
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies. 

And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed ? 



ODE TO A GRECIAN URN 125 

What little town by river or seashore, 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
Is emptied of this folk, this jjious morn ? 
And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 40 



Attic shape ! Fair attitude ! w4th brede 

Of marble men and maidens overwrought. 
With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 
As doth eternity : Cold Pastoral ! 

When old age shall this generation waste. 
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
" Beauty is truth, truth beauty," — that is all 

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 50 

ODE TO PSYCHE 

GrODDESS ! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung 
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, 

And pardon that thy secrets should be sung 
Even into thine own soft-conched ear : 



126 ODE TO PSYCHE 

Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see 

The winged Psyche with awakened eyes ? 
I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly, 

And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise. 
Saw °two fair creatures, couched side by side 
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof 
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran 
A brooklet, scarce espied : 

'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, 

Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, 
They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass ; 

Their arms embraced, and their pinions too; 

Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu, 
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber. 
And ready still past kisses to outnumber 

At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love : 
The winged boy I knew ; 

But who wast thou, happy, happy dove ? 
His Psyche true ! 

O latest born and loveliest vision far 

Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy ! 
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-regioned star. 

Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky ; 



ODE TO PSYCHE 127 

Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, 

Nor altar heaped with flowers ; 
Nor virgin-choir to make "delicious moan 30 

Upon the midnight hours ; 
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet 

From chain-swung censer teeming ; 
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat 
Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming. 

brightest ! though too late for antique vows, 
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, 

When holy were the haunted forest boughs, 
Holy the air, the water, and the fire j 

Yet even in these days so far retired 40 

From happy pieties, thy lucent fans, 
Fluttering among the faint Olympians, 

1 see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired. 
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan 

Upon the midnight hours ; 
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet 

From swinged censer teeming ; 
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat 

Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming. 

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane 50 

In some untrodden region of my mind, 



128 ODE TO PSYCHE 

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant 
pain, 

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: 
Far, far around shall those dark-clustered trees 

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep ; 
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, 

The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep ; 
And in the midst of this wide quietness 
A rosy sanctuary will I dress 
With the wreathed trellis of a working brain, 60 

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, 
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign. 

Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same ; 
And there shall be for thee all soft delight 

That shadowy thought can win, 
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night. 

To let the warm Love in ! 

TO AUTUMN 



Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. 
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun ; 

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run ; 



TO AUTUMN 129 

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, 
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ; 

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more. 
And still more, later flowers for the bees. 
Until they think warm days will never cease, lo 

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells. 

II 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ? 

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
°Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, 

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers : 
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 

Steady thy laden head across a brook ; 20 

Or by a cider-press, with patient look. 

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. 

Ill 

Where are the songs of Spring ? Aye, where are they ? 

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, — 
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 



130 TO AUTUMN 

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 29 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 
Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; 
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

ODE ON MELANCHOLY 



No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist 

Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine ; 
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed 

By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine ; 
Make not your rosary of yew-berries, 

Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be 
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl 
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries ; 

For shade to shade will come too drowsily, 

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. 10 



ODE ON MELANCHOLY 131 

II 

But when the melancholy fit shall fall 

Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, 
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, 

And hides the green hill in an April shroud ; 
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, 

Or on the rainbow of the salt sand- wave. 
Or on the wealth of globed peonies ; 
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, 

Em prison her soft hand, and let her rave. 

And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. 20 

III 

She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die ; 

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
Bidding adieu ; and aching Pleasure nigh, 

Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips : 
Aye, in the very temple of Delight 

Veiled Melancholy has her °sovran shrine, 

Though seen of none save him whose strenuous 
tongue 
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine ; 
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might. 

And be among her cloudy trophies hung. 30 



132 FANCY 



FANCY 



Ever let the Fancy roam, 

Pleasure never is at home : 

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth. 

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth ; 

Then let winged Fancy wander 5 

Through the thought still spread beyond her : 

Open wide the mind's cage-door, 

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar. 

O sweet Fancy ! let her loose ; 

Summer's joys are spoilt by use, lo 

And the enjoying of the Spring 

Fades as does its blossoming; 

Autumn's red-lipped fruitage too, 

Blushing through the mist and dew, 

Cloys with tasting : What do then ? 

Sit thee by the ingle, when 

The sear faggot blazes bright, 

Spirit of a winter's night ; 

When the soundless earth is muffled, 

And the caked snow is shuffled 20 

From the ploughboy's °heavy shoon ; 

When the Night doth meet the Noon 

In a dark conspiracy 



FANCY 133 

To banish Even from her sky. 

Sit thee there, and send abroad, 

With a mind self-overawed, 

Fancy, high-commissioned : — send her ! 

She has vassals to attend her : 

She will bring, in spite of frost, 

Beauties that the earth hath lost; 30 

She will bring thee, altogether. 

All delights of summer weather ; 

All the buds and bells of May, 

From dewy sward or thorny spray ; 

All the heaped Autumn's wealth, 

With a still, mysterious stealth : 

She will mix these pleasures up 

Like three fit wines in a cup, 

And thou shalt quaff it : — thou shalt hear 

Distant harvest-carols clear ; 40 

Rustle of the reaped corn ; 

Sweet birds antheming the morn: 

And, in the same moment — hark ! 

'Tis the early April lark, 

Or the rooks, with busy caw. 

Foraging for °sticks and straw. 

Thou shalt, at one glance, behold 

The daisy and the marigold ; 



134 FANCY 

White-plumed lilies, and the first 

Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst ; 50 

Shaded hyacinth, alway 

Sapphire queen of the mid-May ; 

And every leaf, and every flower 

Pearled with the self-same shower. 

Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep 

Meagre from its celled sleep; 

And the snake all winter-thin 

Cast on sunny bank its skin; 

Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see 

Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, 60 

When the hen-bird's wing doth rest 

Quiet on her mossy nest ; 

Then the hurry and alarm 

When the bee-hive cast its swarm ; 

Acorns ripe down-pattering, 

While the autumn breezes sing. 

Oh, sweet Fancy ! let her loose ; 
Everything is spoilt by use : 
Where's the cheek that doth not fade, 
Too much gazed at ? Where's the maid 70 

Whose lip mature is ever new ? 
Where's the eye, however blue, 



FANCY 135 

Doth not weary ? Where's the face 

One would meet in every place ? 

Where's the voice, however soft, 

One would hear so very oft ? 

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth 

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth. 

Let, then, winged Fancy find 

Thee a mistress to thy mind : 80 

Dulcet-eyed as °Ceres' daughter, 

Ere the God of Torment taught her 

How to frown and how to chide ; 

With a waist and with a side 

White as Hebe's, when her zone 

Slipped its golden clasp, and down 

Fell her kirtle to her feet. 

While she held the goblet sweet, 

And Jove grew languid. — Break the mesh 

Of the Fancy's silken leash ; 90 

Quickly break her prison-string 

And such joys as these she'll bring. — 

Let the winged Fancy roam, 

Pleasure never is at home. 



136 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 



Ah, wliat can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 
Alone and palely loitering ? 

The sedge is withered from the lake, 
And no birds sing. 

II 

Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 
So haggard and so woe-begone ? 

The squirrel's granary is full, 
And the harvest's done. 

Ill 

I see a lily on thy brow. 

With anguish moist and fever dew ; 
And on thy cheek a fading rose 

Fast withereth too. 

IV 

I met a lady in the meads. 

Full beautiful, — a faery's child ; 

Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
And her eyes were wild. 



LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI l37 



I set her on my pacing steed, 

And nothing else saw all day long; 

For sideways would she lean, and sing 

A faery's song. 20 

VI 

I made a garland for her head, 

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone ; 

She looked at me as she did love, 
And made sweet moan. 



VII 

She found me roots of relish sweet, 
And honey wild, and manna dew ; 

And sure in language strange she said, 
"I love thee true.'' 

VIII 

She took me to her elfin grot. 

And there she gazed and sighed deep, 30 

And there I shut her wild sad eyes — 

So kissed to sleep. 



138 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 



IX 



And there we slumbered on the moss, 
And there I dreamed, ah woe betide, 

The latest dream I ever dreamed 
On the cold hill side. 



I saw pale kings, and princes too. 

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all ; 

Who cried — " La Belle Dame sans Merci 
Hath thee in thrall ! " 40 

XI 

I saw their starved lips in the gloom 
With horrid warning gaped wide, 

And I awoke, and found me here 
On the cold hill side. 

XII 

And this is why I sojourn here 

Alone and palely loitering, 
Though the sedge is withered from the lake, 

And no birds sing. 



SOLITUDE 139 

SOLITUDE 

SOLITUDE ! if I must with thee dwell, 

Let it not be among the jumbled heap 

Of murky buildings; climb with me to the steep, — 
Nature's observatory — whence the dell, 
Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell. 

May seem a span ; let me thy vigils keep 

'Mongst boughs pavilioned, where the deer's swift 
leap 
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. 
But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee, 

Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, lo 

Whose words are images of thoughts refined, 
Is my soul's pleasure ; and it sure must be 

Almost the highest bliss of human-kind. 
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. 

ON FIEST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S 
HOMER 

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold. 
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; 
Round many western islands have I been 

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 



140 ON THE SEA 

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne ; 

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
Till I heard °Chapman speak out loud and bold : 
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 

When a new planet swims into his ken ; k 

Or like stout °Cortez when with eagle eyes 

He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise — 

Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 

ON THE SEA 

It keeps eternal whisperings around 

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell 
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell 

Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. 

Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, 
That scarcely will the very smallest shell 
Be moved for days from whence it sometime fell, 

When last the winds of heaven were unbound. 

Oh ye ! who have your eye-balls vexed and tired. 
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea ; i 

Oh ye ! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude, 
Or fed too much with cloying melody, — 

Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood 

Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired ! 



TWO SONNETS ON FAME 141 

TWO SONNETS ON FAME 



Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy 

To those who woo her with too slavish knees, 

But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy, 

And dotes the more upon a heart at ease ; 

She is a Gipsy, will not speak to those 

Who have not learnt to be content without her ; 

A Jilt, whose ear was never whispered close, 

Who thinks they scandal her who talk about 

her ; 
A very Gipsy is she, Nilus-born, 
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar; lo 

Ye love-sick Bards, repay her scorn for scorn, 
Ye Artists lovelorn, madmen that ye are ! 
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu, 
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you. 

II 

" You cannot eat your cake and have it too. " — Proverb. 

How fevered is the man, who cannot look 
Upon his mortal days with temperate blood. 
Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book, 



142 SONNET TO SLEEP 

And robs his fair name of its maidenhood ; 

It is as if the rose should phick herself, 

Or the ripe plum liuger its misty bloom, ac 

As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf, 

Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom. 

But the rose leaves herself upon the brier. 

For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed, 

And the ripe plum still w^ears its dim attire. 

The undisturbed lake has crystal space, 

Why then should man, teasing the world for grace, 

Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed ? 

SONNET TO SLEEP 

SOFT embalmer of the still midnight, 

Shutting with careful fingers and benign. 

Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light, 

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine : 

O soothest Sleep ! if so it please thee, close. 

In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes, 

Or wait the amen, ere thy poj^py throws 

Around my bed its lulling charities ; 

Then save me, or the passed day will shine 

Upon my pillow, breeding many woes, — i< 

Save me from curious conscience, that still lords 



SONNET TO HOMER 143 

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole j 
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, 
And seal the hushed casket of my soul. 



SONNET TO HOMER 

Standing aloof in °giant ignorance, 

Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, 

As one who sits ashore and longs perchance 

To visit Dolphin-coral in deep seas. 

So thou wast blind ; — but then the veil was rent, 

For Jove uncurtained Heaven to let thee live, 

And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent, 

And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive. 

Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light. 

And precipices show untrodden green, 

There is a °budding morrow in midnight. 

There is a triple sight in blindness keen ; 

Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel 

To Dian, Queen of Earth; and Heaven, and Hell. 



144 LINES FROM ENDYMION 



OPENING LINES OF ENDYMION 

BOOK I 

A THING of beauty is a joy forever : 

Its loveliness increases ; it will never 

Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep 

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing 

A flowery band to bind us to the earth. 

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth 

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days. 

Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways lo 

Made for our searching : yes, in spite of all, 

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon. 

Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon 

For simple sheep ; and such are daffodils 

With the green world they live in ; and clear rills 

That for themselves a cooling covert make 

'Gainst the hot season ; the mid forest brake, 

liich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms : 

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms 20 



LINES FROM ENDYMION 145 

We have imagined for the mighty dead; 
All lovely tales that we have heard or read : 
An endless fountain of immortal drink, 
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. 

Nor do we merely feel these essences 

For one short hour ; no, even as the trees 

That whisper round a temple become soon 

Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, 

The passion poesy, glories infinite, 

Haunt us till they become a cheering light 30 

Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, 

That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast, 

They always must be with us, or we die. 



146 I STOOD TIP-TOE 



POEM 

"Places of nestling green for Poets made." 

— Story of Rimini. 

I STOOD tip-toe upon a little hill, 

The air was cooling, and so very still. 

That the sweet buds which with a modest pride 

Pull droopingiy, in slanting curve aside. 

Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, 

Had not yet lost those starry diadems 

Caught from the early sobbing of the morn. 

The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn, 

And fresh from the clear brook ; sweetly they slept 

On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept lo 

A little noiseless noise among the leaves, 

Born of the very sigh that silence heaves : 

For not the faintest motion could be seen 

Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green. 

There was wide wand'ring for the greediest eye, 

To peer about upon variety ; 

Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim, 

And trace the dwindled edgings of its °brim ; 



/ STOOD TIP-TOE 147 

To picture out the quaint, and curious bending 

Of a fresli woodland alley, never' ending; 20 

Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves, 

Guess where the °j aunty streams refresh themselves. 

I gazed awhile, and felt as light, and free 

As though the fanning wings of Mercury 

Had played upon my heels : I was light-hearted, 

And many pleasures to my vision started ; 

So I straightway began to pluck a posy 

Of luxuries bright, milky, soft, and rosy. 

A bush of May flowers with the °bees about them ; 
Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them ; 30 
And let a lush laburnum oversweep them. 
And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them 
Moist, cool, and green ; and shade the violets, 
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. 

A filbert hedge with wild brier overtwined, 
And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind 
Upon their summer thrones ; there too should be 
The frequent °chequer of a youngling tree, 
That with a score of light green brethren shoots 
From the quaint mossiness of aged roots : 40 

Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters 
Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters 



148 / STOOD TIP-TOE 

The spreading blue bells : it may haply mourn 
That such fair clusters should be rudely torn 
From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly 
By infant hands, left on the path to die. 

Open afresh your round of starry folds, 

Ye ardent marigolds ! 

Dry up the moisture from your golden lids, 

For great Apollo bids 50 

That in these days your praises should be sung 

On many harps, which he has lately strung ; 

And when again your dewiness he kisses. 

Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses : 

So haply when I rove in some far vale, 

His mighty voice may come upon the gale. 

Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight : 

With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, 

And taper flngers catching at all things. 

To bind them all about with tiny rings. 60 

Linger awhile upon some bending planks 
That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, 
And watch intently Nature's gentle doings : 
They will be found softer than ring-dove's cooings. 
How silent comes the water round that bend j 



/ STOOD TIP-TOE 149 

Not the minutest whisper does it send 

To the o'erhanging sallows : blades of grass 

Slowly across the chequered shadows pass. 

Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach 

To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach 70 

A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds ; 

Where swarms of minnows show their little heads, 

Staying their °wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, 

To taste the luxury of sunny beams 

Tempered with coolness. How they ever wrestle 

With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle 

Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand. 

If you but scantily hold out the hand, 

That very instant not one will remain; 

But turn your eye, and they are there again. 80 

The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses. 

And cool themselves among the em'rald tresses ; 

The while they cool themselves, they freshness give, 

And moisture, that the bowery green may live : 

So keeping up an interchange of favors. 

Like good men in the truth of their behaviors. 

Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop 

Erom low hung branches ; little space they stop ; 

But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek j 

Then off at once, as in a wanton freak : 90 



150 I STOOD TIP-TOE 

Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings, 
Pausing upon their °yellow flutterings. 
Were I in such a place, I sure should pray- 
That naught less sweet, might call my thoughts away, 
Than the soft rustle of a maiden's gown 
Fanning away the dandelion's down ; 
Than the light music of her nimble toes 
Patting against the sorrel as she goes. 
How she would start, and blush, thus to be caught 
Playing in all her innocence of thought. loo 

0, let me lead her gently o'er the brook. 
Watch her half-smiling lips, and downward look; 
0, let me for one moment touch her wrist ; 
Let me one moment to her breathing list ; 
And as she leaves me may she often turn 
Her fair eyes looking through her locks auburn. 
What next ? A tuft of evening primroses. 
O'er which the mind may hover till it dozes ; 
O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep. 
But that 'tis ever startled by the leap no 

Of buds into ripe flowers ; or by the flitting 
Of diverse moths, that aye their rest are quitting; 
Or by the moon lifting her silver rim 
Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim 
Coming into the blue with all her light. 



/ STOOD TIP-TOE 151 

0, Maker of sweet poets, dear delight 

Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers ; 

Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers, 

Mingler with leaves, and dew and tumbling streams, 

Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams, 120 

Lover of loneliness, and wandering. 

Of upcast eye, and tender pondering ! 

Thee must I praise above all other glories 

That smile us on to tell delightful stories. 

For what has made the sage or poet write 

But the fair paradise of Nature's light ? 

In the calm grandeur of a sober line, 

We see the waving of the mountain pine ; 

And when a tale is beautifully °staid. 

We feel the safety of a hawthorn glade : 130 

When it is moving on luxurious wings. 

The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings: 

Fair dewy roses brush against our faces, 

And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases ; 

O'erhead we see the jasmine and sweet brier. 

And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire : 

While at our feet, the voice of crystal bubbles 

Charms us at once away from all our troubles : 

So that we feel uplifted from the world, 139 

Walking upon the white clouds wreathed and curled. 



152 I STOOD TIP-TOE 

So felt he, who first told how Psyche went 

On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment ; 

What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips 

First touched ; what amorous, and fondling nips 

They gave each other's cheeks ; with all their sighs, 

And how they kissed each other's tremulous eyes : 

Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown. 

To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne. 

So did he feel, who pulled the boughs aside, 

That we might look into a forest wide, 150 

To catch a glimpse of Fauns, and Dryades 

Coming with softest rustle through the trees ; 

And garlands woven of flowers wild, and sweet, 

"Upheld on ivory wrists, or sporting feet ; 

Telling us how fair, trembling Syrinx fled 

Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread. 

Poor nymph, — poor Pan, — how he did weep to find 

Naught but a lovely sighing of the wind 

Along the reedy stream ; a half-heard strain, 

Full of sweet desolation — balmy pain. 160 

What first inspired a bard of old to sing 
Narcissus °pining o'er the untainted spring ? 
In some delicious ramble, he had found 
A little space, with boughs all woven round ; 



/ STOOD TIP-TOE 153 

And in the midst of all, a clearer pool 

Than e'er reflected in its pleasant cool, 

The blue sky here, and there, serenely peeping 

Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping. 

And on the bank a lonely flower he spied, 

A meek and forlorn flower, with, naught of pride, 170 

Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness, 

To woo its own sad image into nearness : 

Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move ; 

But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love. 

So while the poet stood in this sweet spot, 

Some fainter gleamings o'er his fancy shot j 

Nor was it long ere he had told the tale 

Of young Narcissus, and sad Echo's bale. 

Where had he been, from whose warm head out-flew 

That sweetest of all songs, that ever new, 180 

That aye refreshing, pure deliciousness, 

Coming ever to bless 

The wanderer by moonlight ? to him bringing 

Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing 

From out the middle air, from flowery nests, 

And from the pillowy silkiness that rests 

Full in the speculation of the stars. 

Ah ! surely he had burst our mortal bars ; 



154 / STOOD TIP-TOE 

Into some wond'rous region he had gone, 

To search for thee, divine Endymion ! 190 

He was a Poet, sure a lover too, 

Who stood on Latmus' top, what time there blew 

Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below ; 

And brought in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow 

A hymn from Dian's temple ; while upswelling, 

The incense went to her own starry dwelling. 

But though her face was clear as infant's eyes, 

Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice, 

The Poet wept at her so piteous fate, 

Wept that such beauty should be desolate : 200 

So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won, 

And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion. 

Queen of the wide air ; thou most lovely queen 
Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen ! 
As thou exceedest all things in thy shine. 
So every tale, does this sweet tale of thine. 
0, for three words of honey, that I might 
Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night ! 
Where distant ships do seem to show their keels 
Phoebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels, 210 



/ STOOD TIP-TOE 155 

And turned to smile upon tliy bashful eyes, 

Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize. 

The evening weather was so bright, and clear, 

That men of health were of unusual cheer ; 

Stepping like Homer at the trumpet's call, 

Or young Apollo on the pedestal : 

The breezes were ethereal, and pure, 

And crept through half-closed lattices to cure 

The languid sick ; it cooled their fevered sleep. 

And soothed them into slumbers full and deep. 220 

Soon they awoke clear eyed : nor burnt with thirsting, 

Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting : 

And springing up, they met the wond'ring sight 

Of their dear friends, nigh foolish with delight ; 

Young men and maidens at each other gazed 

With hands held back, and motionless, amazed 

To see the brightness in each other's eyes ; 

And so they stood, filled with a sweet surprise, 

Until their tongues were loosed in poesy. 

Therefore no lover did of anguish die : 230 

But the soft numbers, in that moment spoken, 

Made silken ties, that never may be broken. 



156 ISABELLA 

ISABELLA; 

OR, 

THE POT OF BASIL 



Eair Isabel, poor simple Isabel ! 

Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye ! 
They could not in the self-same mansion dwell 

Without some stir of heart, some malady ; 
They could not sit at meals but feel how well 

It soothed each to be the other by ; 
They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep, 
But to each other dream, and nightly weep. 

II 

With every morn their love grew tenderer, 
With every eve deeper and tenderer still ; 

He might not in house, field, or garden stir, 
But her full shape would all his seeing fill ; 

And his continual voice was pleasanter 
To her than noise of trees or hidden rill ; 

Her lute-string gave an echo of his name. 

She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same. 



ISABELLA 157 

III 

He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch, 
Before the door had given her to his eyes ; 

And from her chamber-window he would catch 

Her beauty farther than the falcon spies ; 20 

And constant as her vespers would he watch, 
Because her face was turned to the same skies ; 

And with sick longing all the night outwear, 

To hear her morning-step upon the stair. 

IV 

A whole long month of May in this sad plight 
Made their cheeks paler by the break of June : 

" To-morrow will I bow to my delight, 
To-morrow will I ask my lady's boon." — 

" 0, may I never see another night, 

Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love's tune." — 30 

So spake they to their pillows ; but, alas, 

Honeyless days and days did he let pass ; 



Until sweet Isabella's untouched cheek 
Fell sick within the rose's just domain, 

Fell thin as a young mother's, who doth seek 
By every lull to cool her infant's pain : 



158 ISABELLA 

" How ill she is," said he, " I may not speak, 
And yet I will, and tell my love all plain : 
If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears, 
And at the least 'twill startle off her cares." 40 

VI 

So said he one fair morning, and all day 
His heart beat awfully against his side ; 

And to his heart he inwardly did pray 

For power to speak ; but still the ruddy tide 

Stifled his voice, and pulsed resolve away — 
Fevered his high conceit of such a bride. 

Yet brought him to the meekness of a child : 

Alas ! when passion is both meek and wild ! 

VII 

So once more he had waked and anguished 

A dreary night of love and misery, 50 

If Isabel's quick eye had not been wed 
To every symbol on his forehead high ; 

She saw it waxing ver}^ pale and dead. 

And straight all flushed ; so, lisped tenderly, 

" Lorenzo ! " — here she ceased her timid quest, 

But in her tone and look he read the rest. 



ISABELLA 159 

VIII 

" Isabella, I can half perceive 

That I may speak my grief into thine ear ; 

If thou didst ever anything believe, 

Believe how I love thee, believe how near 60 

My soul is to its doom : I would not grieve 

Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear 

Thine eyes by gazing ; but I cannot live 

Another night, and not my passion shrive. 

IX 

" Love ! thou art leading me from wintry cold, 
Lady ! thou leadest me to summer clime. 

And I must taste the blossoms that unfold 

In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time." 

So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold. 

And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme : 70 

Great bliss was with them, and great happiness 

Grew, like a lusty flower in June's caress. 



Parting they seemed to tread upon the air, 
Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart 

Only to meet again more close, and share 
The inward fragrance of each other's heart. 



160 ISABELLA 

She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair 

Sang, of delicious love and honeyed dart ; 
He with light steps went up a western hill. 
And bade the sun farewell, and joyed his fill. 80 

XI 

All close they meet again, before the dusk 
Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil. 

All close they met, all eves, before the dusk 
Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil, 

Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk. 

Unknown of any, free from whispering tale. 

Ah ! better had it been forever so. 

Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe. 

XII 

Were they unhappy then ? — it cannot be — 

Too many tears for lovers have been shed, 90 

Too many sighs give we to them in fee. 
Too much of pity after they are dead, 

Too many doleful stories do we see. 

Whose matter in bright gold were best be read ; 

Except in such a page where Theseus' spouse 

Over the pathless waves towards him bows. 



ISABELLA 161 

XIII 

But, for the general award of love, 

The little sweet doth kill much bitterness ; 

Though Dido silent is in under-grove. 

And Isabella's was a great distress, loo 

Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove 
Was not embalmed, this truth is not the less-^ 

Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers, 

Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers. 

XIV 

With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt, 

Enriched from ancestral merchandise, 
And for them many a weary hand did swelt 

In torched mines and noisy factories, 
And many once proud-quivered loins did melt 

In blood from stinging whip ; — with hollow eyes no 
Many all day in dazzling river stood. 
To take the rich-ored drif tings of the flood. 

XV 

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath, 
And went all naked to the hungry shark ; 

For them his ears gushed blood ; for them in death 
The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark 



162 ISABELLA 

Lay full of darts ; for them alone did seethe 

A thousand men in troubles wide and dark : 
Half-ignorant, they turned an easy wheel, 
That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel. 120 

XVI 

Why were they proud ? Because their marble founts 
Gushed with more pride than do a wretch's tears ? — 

Why were they proud ? Because fair orange-mounts 
Were of more soft assent than lazar stairs ? — 

Why were they proud ? Because red-lined accounts 
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years ? — 

Why were they proud ? again we ask aloud, 

Why in the name of Glory were they proud ? 

XVII 

Yet were these Florentines as self-retired 

In hungry pride and gainful cowardice, 130 

As two close Hebrews in that land inspired. 
Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies ; 

The hawks of ship-mast forests — the untired 
And panniered mules for ducats and old lies — 

Quick cat's-paws on the generous stray-away, — 

Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay. 



ISABELLA 163 

V 

XVIII 

How was it these same ledger-men could spy 

Fair Isabella in her downy nest ? 
How could they find out in Lorenzo's eye 

A straying from his toil ? Hot Egypt's pest 140 
Into their vision covetous and sly ! 

How could these money-bags see east and west ? — 
Yet so they did — and every dealer fair 
Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare. 

XIX 

eloquent and famed Boccaccio ! 

Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon, 
And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow, 

And of thy roses amorous of the moon, 
And of thy lilies, that do paler grow 

Now they can no more hear thy ghittern's tune, 150 
For venturing syllables that ill beseem 
The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme. 

XX 

Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale 

Shall move on soberly, as it is meet ; 
There is no other crime, no mad assail 

To make old prose in modern rhyme more sweet : 



164 ISABELLA 

But it is done — succeed the verse or fail — 
To honor thee, and thy gone spirit greet; 
To stead thee as a verse in English tongue, 
An echo of thee in the north-wind sung. i6o 

XXI 

These brethren having found by many signs 
What love Lorenzo for their sister had, 

And how she loved him too, each unconfines 
His bitter thoughts to other, weli-nigh mad 

That he, the servant of their trade designs. 
Should in their sister's love be blithe and glad, 

When 'twas their plan to coax her by degrees 

To some high noble and his olive-trees. 

XXII 

And many a jealous conference had they, 

And many times they bit their lips alone, 170 

Before they fixed upon a surest way 

To make the youngster for his crime atone ; 

And at the last, these men of cruel clay 
Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone ; 

For they resolved in some forest dim 

To kill Lorenzo, and there bury him. 



ISABELLA 165 

XXIII 

So on a pleasant morning, as he leant 

Into tlie sun-rise, o'er the balustrade 
Of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent 

Their footing through the dews ; and to him said, i8o 
" You seem there in the quiet of content, 

Lorenzo, and we are most loath to invade 
Calm speculation ; but if you are wise, 
Bestride your steed while cold is in the skies. 

XXIV 

To-day we purpose, aye, this hour we mount 
To spur three leagues towards the Apennine ; 

Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count 
His dewy rosary on the eglantine." 

Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont, 

Bowed a fair greeting to these serpents' whine ; 190 

And went in haste, to get in readiness, 

With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman's dress. 

XXV 

And as he to the court-yard passed along, 

Each third step did he pause, and listened oft 

If he could hear his lady's matin-song, 
Or the light whisper of her footstep soft ; 



166 ISABELLA 

And as he thus over his passion hung, 
He heard a laugh full musical aloft ; 
When, looking up, he saw her features bright 
Smile through an in-door lattice, all delight. 200 

XXVI 

" Love, Isabel ! '' said he, " I was in pain 

Lest I should miss to bid thee a good morrow : 

Ah ! what if I should lose thee, when so fain 
I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow 

Of a poor three hours' absence ? but we'll gain 
Out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow. 

Good-by! I'll soon be back." — "Good-by!" said 
she: — 

And as he went she chanted merrily. 

XXVII 

So the two brothers and their °murdered man 

Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream 210 

Gurgles through straitened banks, and still doth fan 
Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream 

Keeps, head against the freshets. Sick and wan 
The brothers' faces in the ford did seem, 

Lorenzo's flush with love. — They passed the water 

Into a forest quiet for the slaughter. 



ISABELLA 167 

XXVIII 

There was Lorenzo slain and buried in, 

There in that forest did his great love cease ; 

Ah ! when a soul doth thus its freedom win, 

It aches in loneliness — is ill at peace 220 

As the break-covert blood-hounds of such sin ; 

They dipped their swords in the water, and did tease 

Their horses homeward, with convulsed spur, 

Each richer by his being a mui'derer. 

XXIX 

They told their sister how, with sudden speed, 
Lorenzo had ta'en ship for foreign lands, 

Because of some great urgency and need 
In their affairs, requiring trusty hands. 

Poor Girl ! put on thy stifling widow's weed. 

And 'scape at once from Hope's accursed bands ; 230 

To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow, 

And the next day will be a day of sorrow. 

XXX 

She weeps alone for pleasures not to be ; 

Sorely she wept until the night came on, 
And then, instead of love, misery ! 

She brooded o'er the luxury alone : 



168 ISABELLA 

His image in the dusk she seemed to see, 
And to the silence made a gentle moan, 
Spreading her perfect arms upon the air, 2/9 

And on her couch low murmuring, " Where ? where ?" 

XXXI 

But Selfishness, Love's cousin, held not long 

Its fiery vigil in her single breast ; 
She fretted for the golden hour, and hung 

Upon the time with feverish unrest — 
Not long — for soon into her heart a throng 

Of higher occupants, a richer zest. 
Came tragic ; passion not to be subdued, 
And sorrow for her love in travels rude. 

XXXII 

In the mid days of autumn, on their eves 

The breath of Winter comes from far away, 250 

And the sick west continually bereaves 
Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay 

Of death among the bushes and the leaves, 
To make all bare before he dares to stray 

From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel 

By gradual decay from beauty fell, 



ISABELLA 169 

XXXIIl 

Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes 

She asked her brothers, with an eye all pale, 

Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes 

Could keep him off so long ? They spake a tale 260 

Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes 

Came on them, like a smoke from °Hinnom's vale ; 

And every night in dreams they groaned aloud, 

To see their sister in her snowy shroud. 

XXXIV 

And she had died m drowsy ignorance, 

But for a thing more deadly dark than all ; 

It came like a fierce potion, drunk b}^ chance, 
Which saves a sick man from the feathered pall 

For some few gasping moments ; like a lance, 

Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall 270 

With cruel pierce, and bringing him again 

Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain. 

XXXV 

It was a vision. — In the drowsy gloom, 
The dull of midnight, at her couch's foot 

Lorenzo stood, and wept : the forest tomb 

Had marred his glossy hair which once could shoot 



170 ISABELLA 

Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom 
Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute 
From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears 
Had made a miry channel for his tears. 280 

XXXVI 

Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake ; 

For there was striving, in its piteous tongue, 
To speak as when on earth it was awake. 

And Isabella on its music hung: 
Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake. 

As in a palsied Druid's harp imstrung ; 
And through it moaned a ghostly under-song. 
Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briers among. 

XXXVII 

Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright 

With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof 290 

From the poor girl by magic of their light. 
The while it did unthread the horrid woof 

Of the late darkened time, — the murderous spite 
Of pride and avarice, — the dark pine roof 

In the forest, — and the sodden turfed dell. 

Where, without any word, from stabs he fell. 



1 



ISABELLA 171 



XXXVIII 



Saying moreover, "Isabel, my sweet! 

Red whortle-berries droop above my head, 
And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet ; 

Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed 300 

Their leaves and prickly nuts ; a sheep-fold bleat 

Comes from beyond the river to my bed ; 
Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom, 
And it shall comfort me within the tomb. 

XXXIX 

" I am a shadow now, alas ! alas ! 

Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling 
Alone : I chant alone the holy mass, 

While little sounds of life are round me knelling, 
And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass. 

And many a chapel bell the hour is telling, 310 

Paining me through : those sounds grow strange to me, 
And thou art distant in Humanity. 

XL 

" I know what was, I feel full well what is, 
And I should rage, if spirits could go mad j 

Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss. 

That paleness warms my grave, as though I had 



172 ISABELLA 

A Seraph chosen from the bright abyss 

To be my spouse : thy paleness makes me glad ; 
Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel 
A greater love through all my essence steal." 320 

XLI 

The Spirit mourned " Adieu ! " — dissolved, and left 

The atom darkness in a slow turmoil ; 
As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft, 

Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil. 
We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft. 

And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil : 
It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache, 
And in the dawn she started up awake. 

XLII 

" Ha ! ha ! " said she, " I knew not this hard life, 
I thought the worst was simple misery ; 330 

I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife 
Portioned us — happy days, or else to die ; 

But there is crime — a brother's bloody knife ! 
Sweet spirit, thou hast schooled my infancy : 

I'll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes. 

And greet thee morn and even in the skies." 



ISABELLA 173 

XLIII 

When the full morning came, she had devised 
How she might secret to the forest hie ; 

How she might find the clay, so dearly prized, 

And sing to it one latest lullaby ; 340 

How her short absence might be unsurmised, 
While she the inmost of the dream would try. 

Resolved, she took with her an aged nurse, 

And went into that dismal forest-hearse. 

XLIV 

See, as they creep along the river side, 
How she doth whisper to that aged Dame, 

And, after looking round that campaign wide, 

Shows her a knife. — " What feverish hectic flame 

Burns in thee, child ? — What good can thee betide. 
That thou shouldst smile again ? " — The evening 
came, 350 

And they had found Lorenzo's earthy bed ; 

The flint was there, the berries at his head. 

XLV 

Who hath not loitered in a green church-yard, 

And let his spirit, like a demon-mole. 
Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard, 



174 ISABELLA 

To see scull, coffined bones, and funeral stole ; 
Pitying each, form that hungry Death hath marred, 

And filling it once more with human soul ? 
Ah ! this is holiday to what was felt 
When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt. 360 

XL VI 

She gazed into the fresh-thrown mould, as though 
One glance did fully all its secrets tell ; 

Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know 
Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well ; 

Upon the murderous spot she seemed to grow, 
Like to a native lily of the dell : 

Then with her knife, all sudden, she began 

To dig more fervently than misers can. 

XL VII 

Soon she turned up a soiled glove, whereon 

Her silk had played in purple phantasies, 370 

She kissed it with a lip more chill than stone, 
And put it in her bosom, where it dries 

And freezes utterly unto the bone 

Those dainties made to still an infant's cries : 

Then 'gan she work again ; nor stayed her care. 

But to throw back at times her veiling hair. 



ISABELLA 175 

XLVIII 

That old nurse stood beside her wondering, 

Until her heart felt pity to the core 
At sight of such a dismal laboring, 

And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar, 380 

And put her lean hands to the horrid thing : 

Three hours they labored at this travail sore : 
At last they felt the kernel of the grave, 
And Isabella did not stamp and rave. 

XLIX 

Ah ! wherefore all this wormy circumstance ? 

Why linger at the yawning tomb so long ? 
O for the gentleness of old Romance, 

The simple plaining of a minstrel's song! 
Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance. 

For here, in truth, it doth not well belong 390 

To speak : — turn thee to the very tale, 
And taste the music of that vision pale. 



With duller steel than the ° Persean sword 
They cut away no formless monster's head, 

But one, whose gentleness did well accord 

With death, as life. The ancient harps have said, 



176 ISABELLA 

Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord : 

If Love impersonate was ever dead. 
Pale Isabella kissed it, and low moaned. 399 

'Twas love ; cold, — dead indeed, but not dethroned. 

LI 

In anxious secrecy they took it home, 

And then the prize was all for Isabel : 
She calmed its wild hair with a golden comb. 

And all around each eye's sepulchral cell 
Pointed each fringed lash ; the smeared loam 

With tears, as chilly as a dripping w^ell. 
She drenched away : — and still she combed, and kept 
Sighing all day — and still she kissed and wept. 

LII 

Then in a silken scarf, — sweet with the dews 

Of precious flowers plucked in Araby, 410 

And divine liquids come with odorous ooze 
Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully, — 

She wrapped it up ; and for its tomb did choose 
A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by. 

And covered it with mould, and o'er it set 

Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet. 



ISABELLA 111 

LIII 

And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, 
And she forgot the blue above the trees. 

And she forgot the dells where waters run, 

And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze ; 420 

She had no knowledge when the day was done. 
And the new morn she saw not : but in peace 

Hung over her sweet Basil evermore. 

And moistened it with tears unto the core. 

LIV 

And so she ever fed it with thin tears, 

Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew. 

So that it smelt more balmy than its peers 
Of Basil-tufts in Florence ; for it drew 

Nurture besides, and life, from human fears. 

From the fast mouldering head there shut from 
view : 430 

So that the jewel, safely casketed, 

Came forth, and in perfumed leaflets spread. 

LV 

Melancholy, linger here awhile ! 

Music, Music, breathe despondingly. 
Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle, 



178 ISABELLA 

Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us — sigh ! 
Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile ; 

Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily, 
And make a pale light in your cypress glooms, 
Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs. 440 

LVI 

Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe. 

From the deep throat of sad °Melpomene ! 

Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go. 
And touch the strings into a mystery ; 

Sound mournfully upon the winds and low ; 
For simple Isabel is soon to be 

Among the dead : She withers, like a palm 

Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm. 

LVII 

leave the palm to wither by itself; 

Let not quick Winter chill its dying hour ! — 450 
It may not be — those °Baalites of pelf. 

Her brethren, noted the continual shower 
From her dead eyes ; and many a curious elf. 

Among her kindred, wondered that such dower 
Of youth and beauty should be thrown aside 
By one marked out to be a Noble's bride. 



ISABELLA 179 

LVIII 

And, furthermore, her brethren wondered much 
Why she sat drooping by the Basil green. 

And why it flourished, as by magic touch ; 459 

Greatly they wondered what the thing might mean : 

They could not surely give belief, that such 
A very nothing would have power to wean 

Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay, 

And even remembrance of her love's delay. 

LIX 

Therefore they watched a time when they might sift 
This hidden whim ; and long they watched in vain ; 

For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift. 
And seldom felt she any hunger-pain ; 

And when she left, she hurried back, as swift 

As bird on wing to breast its eggs again ; 470 

And, patient as a hen-bird, sat her there 

Beside her Basil, weeping through her hair. 

LX 

Yet they contrived to steal the Basil-pot, 

And to examine it in secret place : 
The thing was vile with green and livid spot, 

And yet they knew it was Lorenzo's face : 



180 ISABELLA 

The guerdon of their murder they had got, 

And so left Florence in a moment's space, 
Never to turn again. — Away they went 
With blood upon their heads to banishment. 480 

LXI 

Melancholy, turn thine eyes away ! 

Music, Music, breathe despondingly ! 
Echo, Echo, on some other day. 

From isles Lethean, sigh to us — sigh ! 
Spirits of grief, sing not your " Well-a-way ! " 

For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die ; 
Will die a death too lone and incomplete, 
Now they have ta'en away her Basil sweet. 

LXII 

Piteous she looked on dead and senseless things. 
Asking for her lost Basil amorously ; 490 

And with melodious chuckle in the strings 
Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry 

After the "Pilgrim in his wanderings. 

To ask him where her Basil was ; and why 

'Twas hid from her : '^ For cruel 'tis," said she, 

"To steal my Basil-pot away from me." 



ISABELLA 181 

LXIII 

And so she pined, and so she died forlorn, 

Imploring for her Basil to the last. 
No heart was there in Florence but did mourn 

In pity of her love, so overcast. 500 

And a sad ditty of this story borne 

From mouth to mouth through all the country 
passed : 
Still is the burthen sung — "0 cruelty, 
To steal my Basil-pot away from me ! " 



182 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 



°St. Agnes' 'Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was ! 
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold ; 
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass, 
And silent was the flock in woolly fold : 
Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told 
His rosary, and while his frosted breath, 
Like pious incense from a censer old. 
Seemed taking flight for heaven, without a death. 
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he 
saith. 

II 

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man ; lo 

Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees. 
And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, 
Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees : 
The sculptured dead, on each side, seem to freeze, 
Emprisoned in black, purgatorial rails : 
Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries. 
He passeth by ; and his weak spirit fails 
To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails. 



. THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 183 

III 

Northward he turneth through a little door, 
And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue 20 
Flattered to tears this aged man and poor ; 
But no — already had his deathbell rung ; 
The joys of all his life were said and sung; 
His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve; 
Another way he went, and soon among 
Rough ashes sat he for his soul's reprieve. 
And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve. 

IV 

That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft ; 
And so it chanced, for many a door was wide. 
From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, 30 

The silver, "snarling trumpets 'gan to chide : 
The level chambers, ready with their pride. 
Were glowing to receive a thousand guests : 
The carved angels, ever eager-eyed. 
Stared, where upon their heads the cornice rests. 
With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on 
their breasts. 

V 

At length burst in the argent revelry. 
With plume, tiara, and all rich array, 



184 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 

Numerous as shadows haunting fairily 39 

The brain, new stuffed, in youth with triumphs gay 
Of old romance. These let us wish away. 
And turn, soul-thoughted, to one Lady there. 
Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day, 
On love, and winged St. Agnes' saintly care, 
As she had heard old dames full many times declare. 

VI 

They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve, 
Young virgins might have visions of delight, 
And soft adorings from their loves receive 
Upon the honeyed middle of the night, 
If ceremonies due they did aright ; 50 

As, supperless to bed they must retire. 
And couch supine their beauties, lily white ; 
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require 
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire. 

VII 

Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline : 
The music, yearning like a God in pain. 
She scarcely heard : her maiden eyes divine, 
Fixed on the floor, saw many a sweeping train 
Pass by — she heeded not at all : in vain 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 185 

Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier, 60 

And back retired ; not cooled by high disdain, 
But she saw not : her heart was otherwhere : 
She sighed for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year. 

VIII 

She danced along with vague, regardless eyes. 
Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short : 
The hallowed hour was near at hand : she sighs 
Amid the timbrels, and the thronged resort 
Of whisperers in anger, or in sport ; 
'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn, 
Hoodwinked with fairy fancy ; all amort, 70 

Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn, 
And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn. 



IX 

So, purposing each moment to retire. 

She lingered still. Meantime, across the moors. 

Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire 

For Madeline. Beside the portal doors. 

Buttressed from moonlight, stands he, and implores 

All saints to give him sight of Madeline, 

But for one moment in the tedious hours, 



186 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 

That he might gaze and worship all unseen ; 80 

Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss — in sooth such 
things have been. 

X 

He ventures in : let no buzzed whisper tell : 
All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords 
Will storm his heart, Love's fev'rous citadel : 
For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes, 
Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords. 
Whose very dogs would execrations howl 
Against his lineage : not one breast affords 
Him any mercy, in that mansion foul. 
Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul. 90 

XI 

Ah, happy chance ! tHe aged creature came, 
Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand, 
To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame, 
Behind a broad hall-pillar, far beyond ^ 

The sound of merriment and chorus bland : 
He startled her ; but soon she knew his face. 
And grasped his fingers in her palsied hand. 
Saying, " Mercy, Porphyro ! hie thee from this place ; 
They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty 
race! 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 187 

XII 

" Get hence ! get hence ! there's dwarfish Hilde- 
brand ; loo 

He had a fever late, and in the fit 
He cursed thee and thine, both house and land : 
Then there's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit 
More tame for his gray hairs — Alas me ! flit ! 
Flit like a ghost away." — " Ah, Gossip dear. 
We're safe enough ; here in this arm-chair sit, 
And tell me how " — " Good Saints ! not here, not 
here ; 
Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy 
bier." 

XIII 

He followed through a lowly arched way. 
Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume, no 

And as she muttered " Well-a — well-a-day ! " 
He found him in a little moonlight room, 
Pale, latticed, chill, and silent as a tomb. 
" Now tell me where is Madeline," said he, 
"0 tell me, Angela, by the holy loom 
Which none but secret sisterhood may see. 
When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously." 



188 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 

XIV 

" St. Agnes ! Ah ! it is St. Agnes' Eve — 
Yet men will murder upon holy days : 
Thou must hold water in a °witch's sieve, 120 

And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays, 
To venture so : it fills me with amaze 
To see thee, Porphyro ! — St. Agnes' Eve ! 
God's help ! my lady fair the conjuror plays 
This very night : good angels her deceive ! 
But let me laugh awhile, I've mickle time to grieve." 

XV 

Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon, 
While Porphyro upon her face doth look. 
Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone 
Who keepeth closed a wond'rous riddle-book, 130 
As spectacled she sits in chimney nook. 
But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told 
His lady's purpose; and he scarce could brook 
Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold, 
And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old. 

XVI 

Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, 
Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 189 

Made purple riot : then doth, he propose 
A stratagem, that makes the beldame start : 
" A cruel man and impious thou art : 140 

Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream 
Alone with her good angels, far apart 
From wicked men like thee. Go, go ! — I deem 
Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst 



XVII 

" I will not harm her, by all saints I swear," 
Quoth Porphyro : " may I ne'er find grace 
When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer, 
If one of her soft ringlets I displace. 
Or look with ruffian passion in her face : 
Good Angela, believe me by these tears ; 150 

Or I will, even in a moment's space. 
Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen's ears, 
And beard them, though they be more fanged than 
wolves and bears." 

XVIII 

" Ah ! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul ? 
A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing. 
Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll ; 



190 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 

Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening, 
Were never missed." — Thus plaining, doth she 

bring 
A gentler speech from burning Porphyro ; 
So woful, and of such deep sorrowing, i6o 

That Angela gives promise she will do 
Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe. 

XIX 

Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy, 
Even to Madeline's chamber, and there hide 
Him in a closet, of such privacy 
That he might see her beauty unespied. 
And win perhaps that night a peerless bride, 
While legioned fairies paced the coverlet. 
And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed. 
Never on such a night have lovers met 170 

Since °Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt. 

XX 

"It shall be as thou wi sliest," said the dame : 
" All cates and dainties shall be stored there 
Quickly on this feast-night : by the tambour frame 
Her own lute thou wilt see : no time to spare, 
Por I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 191 

On such a catering trust my dizzy head. 
Wait here, my child, with patience ; kneel in prayer 
The while : Ah ! thou must needs the lady wed, 
Or may I never leave my grave among the dead." i8o 

XXI 

So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear. 
The lover's endless minutes slowly passed ; 
The dame returned, and whispered in his ear 
To follow her ; with aged eyes aghast 
From fright of dim espial. Safe at last, 
Through many a dusky gallery, they gain 
The maiden's chamber, silken, hushed, and chaste ; 
Where Porphyro took covert, pleased amain. 
His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain. 

XXII 

Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade, igo 

Old Angela was feeling for the stair. 

When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid, 

Rose, like a missioned spirit, unaware : 

With silver taper's light, and pious care, 

She turned, and down the aged gossip led 

To a safe level matting. Kow prepare. 



192 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 

Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed ; 
She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove frayed and 
fled. 

XXIII 

Out went the taper as she hurried in ; 
Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died : 200 

She closed the door, she panted, all akin 
To spirits of the air, and visions wide : 
No uttered syllable, or, woe betide ! 
But to her heart, her heart was voluble, 
Paining with eloquence her balmy side ; 
As though a tongueless nightingale should swell 
Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell. 

XXIV 

A casement high and triple-arched there was. 
All garlanded with carven imag'ries 
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, 210 
And diamonded with panes of quaint device, 
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, 
As are the tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings ; 
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, 
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 
A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and 
kings. 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 193 

XXV 

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 
And threw warm °gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon; 
liose-bloom fell on her hands, together pressed, 220 
And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
And on her hair a glory, like a saint : 
She seemed a splendid angel, newly dressed. 
Save wings, for heaven : — Porphyro grew faint : 
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. 

XXVI 

Anon his heart revives : her vespers done. 
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees ; 
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; 
Loosens her fragrant bodice ; by degrees 
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees : 230 

Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea- weed. 
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, 
In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed. 
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. 

XXVII 

Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest, 
In sort of wakeful swoon, perplexed she lay, 



194 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 

Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed 
Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away; 
Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day ; 
Blissfully havened both from joy and pain ; 240 

Clasped like a missal where swart °Paynims pray ; 
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, 
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. 

XXVIII 

Stolen to this paradise, and so entranced, 
Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress, 
And listened to her breathing, if it chanced 
To wake into a slumberous tenderness ; 
Which when he heard, that minute did he bless, 
And breathed himself : then from the closet crept, 
Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness, 250 

And over the hushed carpet, silent, stepped, 
And 'tween the curtains peeped, where, lo ! — how fast 
she slept. 

XXIX 

Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon 
Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set 
A table, and, half anguished, threw thereon 
A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet : — 



^1 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 195 

O for some drowsy Morpliean amulet ! 
The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion, 
The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarionet, 
Affray his ears, though but in dying tone : — 260 
The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone. 

XXX 

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, 
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavendered. 
While he from forth the closet brought a heap 
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd; 
With jellies soother than the creamy curd, 
And lucent syrups, tinct with cinnamon; 
Manna and dates, in argosy transferred 
From Fez ; and spiced dainties, every one, 
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon. 270 

XXXI 

These delicates he heaped with glowing hand 

On golden dishes and in baskets bright 

Of wreathed silver : sumptuous they stand 

In the retired quiet of the night, 

Filling the chilly room with perfume light. — 

" And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake ! 



196 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 

Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite : 
Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake, 
Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache." 

XXXII 

Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm 280 

Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream 
By the dusk curtains : — 'twas a midnight charm 
Impossible to melt as iced stream : 
The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam ; 
Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies : 
It seemed he never, never could redeem 
From such a steadfast spell his lady's eyes ; 
So mused awhile, entoiled in woofed phantasies. 

XXXIII 

. Awakening up, he took her hollow lute, — 
Tumultuous, — and, in chords that tenderest be, 290 
He played an ancient ditty, long since mute, 
In Provence called, " La belle dame sans merci " : 
Close to her ear touching the melody ; — 
Wherewith disturbed, she uttered a soft moan. 
He ceased — she panted quick — and suddenly 
Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone : 
Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured 
stone. 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 197 

XXXIV 

Her eyes were open, but she still beheld, 
Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep : 
There was a painful change, that nigh expelled 300 
The blisses of her dream so pure and deep 
At which fair Madeline began to weep, 
And moan forth witless words with many a sigh ; 
While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep ; 
Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye, 
Fearing to move or speak, she looked so dreamingly. 

XXXV 

" Ah, Porphyro ! " said she, " but even now 
Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear, 
Made tuneable with every sweetest vow ; 
And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear : 310 ' 

How changed thou art ! how pallid, chill, and drear"! 
Give me that voice again, my Porphyro, 
Those looks immortal, those complainings dear ! 
Oh leave me not in this eternal woe. 
For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go." 

XXXVI 



Beyond a mortal man impassioned far 
At these voluptuous accents, he arose, 



198 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 

Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star 
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose j 
Into her dream he melted, as the rose 320 

Blendeth its odor with the violet, — 
Solution sweet : meantime the frost-wind blows 
Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet 
Against the window-panes ; St. Agnes' moon hath set. 

XXXVII 

'Tis dark : quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet : 
" This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline ! " 
'Tis dark : the iced gusts still rave and beat : 
" No dream, alas ! alas ! and woe is mine ! 
Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine. — 
Cruel ! what traitor could thee hither bring ? 330 
I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine, 
' Though thou f orsakest a deceived thing — 
A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing.'* 

XXXVIII 

" My Madeline ! sweet dreamer ! lovely bride ! 

Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest ? 

Thy beauty's shield, heart-shaped and vermeil dyed ? 

Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest 

After so many hours of toil and quest, 



THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 199 

A. famished pilgrim, — saved by miracle. 
Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest 340 
Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well 
To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel." 

XXXIX 

" Hark ! 'tis an elfin-storm from fairy land. 
Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed : 
Arise — arise ! the morning is at hand ; — 
The bloated wassaillers will never heed : — 
Let us away, my love, with happy speed ; 
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see, — 
Drowned all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead : 
Awake ! arise ! my love, and fearless be, 350 

For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee." 

XL 

She hurried at his words, beset with fear, 

For there were sleeping dragons all around. 

At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears ; 

Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found, 

In all the house was heard no human sound. 

A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door; 

The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound. 



200 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 

Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar ; 
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. 360 

XLI 

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall ! 
Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide. 
Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl. 
With a huge empty flagon by his side : 
The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, 
But his sagacious eye an inmate owns : 
By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide : — 
The chains lie silent on the footworn stones ; 
The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans ; 

Xlill 

And they are gone : aye, ages long ago 370 

These lovers fled away into the storm. 
That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, 
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form 
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, 
Were long be-nightmared. Angela the old 
Died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform ; 
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told. 
For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold. 



NOTES — SHELLEY 



To A Skylark 

P. 1, 1. 8. Cloud of fire : What is it that is like a cloud of 
fire ? What would be the difference in meaning were the semi- 
colon transferred to the end of line 7 ? 

1. 15. unbodied joy : Certain critics maintain that the adjec- 
tive should be embodied, and that it was so intended by Shelley. 
Which adjective seems to agree best with the spirit of the poem ? 

The Cloud 

P. 8, 1. 53. And I laugh to see them whirl and flee. Com- 
pare Wordsworth's Night Piece : — 

'* And above his head he sees 
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens. 
There in a black-blue vault she sails along, 
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small 
And sharp, and bright along the dark abyss 
Drive as she drives." 

201 



202 NOTES — SHELLEY [west wind 

Ode to the West Wind 

"In December (1819) the lastactof Prometheus Unbound '^diS 
brought to a close. Several weeks earlier, on a day when the tem- 
pestuous west wind was collecting the vapors which pour down 
t^e autumnal rains, Shelley conceived, and in great part wrote, 
in a wood that skirted the Arno, that ode in which there is a 
union of lyrical breath with lyrical intensity unsurpassed in 
English song — the Ode to the West Wind . . . Harmonizing 
under a common idea the forces of external nature and the 
passion of the writer's individual heart, the stanzas, with all 
the penetrating power of a lyric, have something almost of epic 
largeness and grandeur." — Dowden. 

P. 11, 1. 21. Maenad: a bacchante — a priestess or votary 
of Bacchus. 

P. 12, 1. 41. grow gray with fear: Shelley explains: "The 
vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers and of lakes, sym- 
pathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is 
consequently influenced by the winds which announce it." 

With a Guitar, to Jane 

Mrs. Jane Williams, the wife of Edward Williams, who was 
drowned with Shelley, was a warm friend of the Shelleys. 
Mrs. Shelley speaks of her as, — 

" A violet by a mossy stone 
Half hidden from the eye." 

Shelley writes of them as "the most amiable of companions." 
The poem accompanied the gift of a guitar. 

P. 14, 1. 1. Ariel to Miranda : The complete beauty of the 
poem cannot be felt without acquaintance with The Tempest. 



3ENSIT1VK plant] J^OTES — SHJ^LLEY 203 

The Sensitive Plant 

During the Shelleys' sojourn at Pisa one of their most con- 
genial friends was Mrs. Masou (Lady Mountcashell). Slie had 
been the favorite pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mrs. Shelley's 
mother, thirty years before. She is described by Medwin as 
"a superior and accomplished woman, a great resource to 
Shelley, who read with her Greek." Medwin further states 
Mrs. Mason was the source of the inspiration of the Sensitive. 
Plants and that "the scene of it was laid in the garden, as un- 
poetical a place as could well be imagined." 

Miss Clairmont's account is suggestive of the poem: "Mrs. 
Mason was very tall, of a lofty and calm presence. Her fea- 
tures were regular and delicate ; her large blue eyes singularly 
well set ; her complexion of a clear pale, but yet full of life, 
and giving an idea of health. Her countenance beamed mildly 
with the expression of a refined, cultivated, and highly cheerful 
mind. She was ever all hopefulness, and serenity, and benevo- 
lence ; her features were ever irradiated by these sentiments, 
and at the same time by sentiments of purity and unconscious 
sweetness and beauty." 

P. 23, 1. 54. fabulous asphodel : In Greek mythology the as- 
phodel covers the fields of Hades. 

1. 57. to roof the glow-worm : Can you find a variation of 
this in To a Skylark f 

P. 29, 1. 177. Baiae, a seaport near the central western coast 
of Italy, famous as a pleasure resort during the first centuries of 
til is era. The ruins of many castles yet mark its former mag- 
nificence. 



204 NOTES — SHELLEY [to words worth 

To Wordsworth 

P. 36, 1. 3. Childhood and youth : — 

"... That time is past, 
And all its aching joys are now no more." 

— Tintern Abbey. 

But Wordsworth finds " abundant recompense." 

1. 7. Thou wert as a lone star : a reference to Wordsworth's 
sympathy with the principles of the French Revolution ; of its 
early stages he writes thus in The Prelude : — 

" Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 
But to be young was very heaven." 

and again : — 

" But Europe at that time was thrilled with joy, 
France standing on the top of golden hours, 
And human nature seeming born again." 

1. 13. Deserting these : The extremes to which the revolu- 
tionists went did not meet with Wordsworth's approval ; France 
seemed to him, — 

" Impatient to put out the holy light 
Of Liberty that yet remained on earth! " 

Compare Browning's Lost Leader. 

To Coleridge 

'* The poem beginning, * Oh, there are spirits of the air,' was 
addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew ; and at 
whose character he could only guess imperfectly through his 
writings, and accounts he heard from some who knew him well. 



TO COLERIDGE] NOTES — SHELLEY 205 

He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than 
conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be 
haunted by what Shelley considered the better and holier aspi- 
rations of his youth." — Note by Mrs. Shelley. 

I have often questioned whether the poem has reference 
(as Mrs. Shelley observes) to Coleridge, or whether it was not 
rather addressed in a despondent mood by Shelley to his own 
spirit. — DowDEN. 

P. 37, 1. 1. spirits of the air : The first stanza suggests The 
Ancient Mariner and Christahel ; according to Trelawny, the 
former was recited in and out of season by Shelley. 

1. 7. With mountain winds : While Coleridge's poetry does 
not mark a "return to nature" so strongly and directly as 
Wordsworth's, he was perhaps the real leader in the revolt from 
eighteenth century standards. But see his Ode to Tranquil- 
lity and A Sunset. 

P. 38, 1. 27. The glory of the moon is dead : The poetry that 
entitles Coleridge to a place in the first class of English poets 
was all written in a year (1797-1798). His visit to Germany 
changed him from poet to philosopher. 

1. 30. a foul fiend : Coleridge resorted to opium shortly 
after his return from Germany. He never freed himself entirely 
from its effects and perhaps its use. 

Mont Blanc 

" The poem, Mont Blanc, was composed under the immedi- 
ate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the 
objects which it attempts to describe ; and as an undisciplined 
overflowing of the soul rests its claim to approbation on ah 



206 NOTES — SHELLEY [mont Blanc 

attempt to imitate the untamable wildness and inaccessible 
solemnity from which these feelings sprang." — Shelley. 

P. 41, 1. 60. Far far above : Study carefully lines 1-16, and 
decide how far the ' ' untamable wildness and inaccessible so- 
lemnity ' ' of the scene have been imitated. What train of thought 
is suggested by the " hunter's bone " and " the wolf " ? 

P. 42, 1. 80. great Mountain : The same idea with variations 
is expressed by Lowell : — 

" With our faint heart the mountain strives." 

— Vision of Sir Launfal. 

P. 43, 1. 96. Power dwells apart : " Yet, after all, I cannot 
but be conscious, in much of what 1 write, of an absence of that 
tranquillity which is the attribute and accompaniment of 
power." — Shelley to Godwin. 

P. 44, 1. 128. solemn power: Select the phrases and epithets 
in stanza v. that give the lines such relentless force. What rhe- 
torical reason is there for the first six words in the stanza ? 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 

P. 45, 1. 1. unseen Power: "The reader will observe how 
much this poem has in common with Wordsworth's great ode, 
Intimations of Immortality.'''' — Dowden. 

Arethusa 

The poem embodies the substance of a Greek myth. Are- 
thusa was a woodland nymph beloved by the river-god, Alpheus. 
He pursues her, and Diana, to protect the nymph, changes her 
to a fountain. When he attempts to mingle his stream with 
the waters of the fountain, Diana thwarts him again. The 



arethusa] notes — SHELLEY 207 

ground is cleft, Arethusa plunges into the opening, passes 
through the earth, and comes out in Sicily. 

P. 55, 1. 1. Arethusa arose: In Shelley's poem, Arethusa is 
represented as a mountain brook when Alpheus first sees her. 

Lines written Among the Euganean Hills 

P. 68, 1. 116. Ocean's child, and then his queen : Venice had 
reached her zenitli in the fifteenth century. This verse is an 
allusion to the unique custom of " Wedding the Adriatic," a 
ceremony originated by the Doge in 1177. 

1. 123. slave of slaves : Austria. 

P. 70, 1. 152. Celtic Anarch's hold : Shelley is obscure, and per- 
haps inaccurate. He is thinking, perhaps, of Napoleon (though 
Napoleon was not a Celt), who ceded the Venetian dominions to 
Austria (1797), forced it to relinquish this territory at the 
battle of Austerlitz (1805), annexed it to the kingdom of Italy, 
making himself the head of this kingdom, further humiliated 
Austria at the battle of Wagram (1809), and rose to the height 
of his power in 1811 " with Eussia and Denmark his allies, and 
Austria and Prussia completely subject to his will." Venetia 
and Lombardy were restored by the Congress of Vienna (Sep- 
tember, 1814, and June, 1815) to Austria, who practically ruled 
Italy. 

1. 158. memories of old time: Venice is first in importance 
among the Italian city-republics. 

1. 174. tempest-cleaving Swan: Byron. Is the epithet ap- 
propriate ? 

P. 71, 1. 177. evil dreams : an allusion, perhaps, to Byron's 
poem. The Dream. 



208 NOTES — SHELLEY [euganean hills 

P. 72, 1. 204. Mighty spirit: Shelley writes: "It (one of 
Byron's poems) sets him not only above, but far above, all the 
poets of the day, every word has the stamp of immortality. I 
despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no 
other with whom it is worth contending." 

OZYMANDIAS 

P. 79, 1. 1. antique land : Diodorus describes the statue. It 
was thought to be, he says, the largest in Egypt, the foot being 
seven cubits long. It was thus inscribed: " I am Ozymandias, 
king of kings ; if any one wishes to know what 1 am and where 
I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits." 

1. 14. far away. Compare with stanza iii. of Mont Blanc. 

A Summer Evening Churchyard 

"The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written 
in the churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up 
the Thames in 1815. . . . A fortnight of a bright, warm July 
was spent in tracing the Thames to its source. He never spent 
a season more tranquilly." — Note by Mrs. Shelley. 

P. 82, 1. 4. In duskier braids : — 

" Thy dewy fingers draw 
The gradual dusky veil." 

— Collins's Ode to Evening, 

In atmosphere the two poems are similar. Compare them, 

Adonais 

Shelley is indebted to the idyls of the Greek poets, Theocri- 
tus, Bion, and Moschus, for many of the ideas and much of the 



ADONATS] NOTES— SHELLEY 209 

phraseology in his elegy on Keats. Baldwin in his Tlie Booh 
of Elegies remarks that "they [the idyls] have been imitated 
by Spenser, improved upon by Milton, parodied by Pope and 
Gay, copied after by Shelley, and loved and admired by all 
poets." 

P. 92, 1, 1. Adonais : a name coined by Shelley ; doubtless 
suggested, however, by the myth of Adonis. Why ? Compare 
the names Adonais and Lycidas in point of fitness. 

P. 93, 1. 10. mighty Mother : Urania, the muse of astronomy. 
Literally, "the heavenly one." Shelley seems to accept the 
latter and to identify Urania with the highest spirit of lyrical 
poetry. 

P. 94, 1. 30. Sire of an immortal strain : Milton. Who are 
the other two "sons of light " ? 

P. 95, 1. 48. sad maiden : Isabella. — Keats, 

P. 96, 1. 73. quick Dreams : the poet's thoughts. 

P. 100, 1. 145. lorn nightingale: an allusion to Keats's Ode 
to a Nightingale. 

1. 151. Curse of Cain : Shelley, in the preface to Adonais, 
exclaims, "Miserable man! You, one of the meanest, have 
wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workman- 
ship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse that, murderer as you 
are, you have spoken daggers, but used none." 

P. 101, 1. 177. Shall that alone which knows: Explain the 
figure. What is the " intense atom " ? 

P. 105, 1. 238. unpastured dragon : meaning ? 

1. 240. Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear ? 
Explain. 

1. 250. The Pythian of the age : Byron. Why Pythian ? 



210 NOTES — SHELLEY [adonais 

P. 106, 1. 268. In sorrow : Byron was not so generous ; he 
speaks thus of Keats : — 

" John Keats — who was killed off hy one critique," 

and again : — 

" * Who killed John Keats ? ' 
' I,' says the Quarterly, 
So savage and Tartarly ; 
' 'Twas one of my feats.' " 

1.269. sweetest lyrist: Thomas Moore. " Whether Moore 
ever showed the faintest interest in or grief for Keats, I know 
not." — W. M. RossETTi. 

P. 107, 1. 271. Midst others of less note came one frail form. 
This verse with the thirty-five following refers to Shelley him- 
self. 

P. 108, 1. 297. A herd-abandoned deer: Compare Hamlet, 
III., 2: — 

" Why, let the stricken deer go weep. 
The hart ungalled play ; 
For some must watch, while some must sleep — 
So runs the world away." 

also Merchant of Venice : — 

" I am a tainted wether of the flock, 
Meetest for death." 

P. 109, 1. 307. softer voice : " Leigh Hunt was Keats's earli- 
est and chief poetical friend and adviser." — Hales. 

He mentioned Shelley and Keats in the Examiner of Decem- 
ber, 1816, as "young poets" who "promised to bring a con- 
siderable addition of strength to the new school of English 



ADONAis] NOTFS — SHELLEY '211 

poetry." Keats's manuscripts (he had yet published nothing) 
in particular, "fairly surprised" him " with tlie truth of their 
ambition and ardent grappling with nature." Hunt was di- 
rectly instrumental in bringing Shelley and Keats together, and 
in making them personally acquainted. 

P. 110, 1. 340. A portion of the Eternal : Pantheism, the doc- 
trine that the universe, taken as a whole, is God. This con- 
ception, variously modified, is popular in poetry. Note other 
instances in this poem. Tennyson objects to the theory : In 
Memoriam, xlvii. 

P. Ill, 1. 357. He is secure : etymology of "secure." 

P. 113, 1. 393. mortal lair: Is there any special significance 
here in the term " lair" ? Etymology ? 

1. 399. Chatterton : Thomas Chatterton was born in 1752 
and died in 1770. Read an interesting account of him in 
Eighteenth Century Literature, Gosse. Keats addresses Chat- 
terton thus : — 

" Thou art among the stars 
Of highest heaven : to the rolling spheres 
Thou sweetly singest : nought thy hymning mars, 
Above the iugrate world and human fears." 

1. 401. Sidney: Sir Philip Sidney was born in 1554 and 
died in 1586. Consult Elizabethan Literature, Saintsbury. 

1. 404. Lucan : Marcus Annseus Lucanus was born in 39 
A.D. and condemned to death by Nero in 65. 

P. 114, 1. 413. amid an Heaven of Song : Compare Merchant 
of Venice, V., i, 60. 

" There's not the smallest orb which thou behold 'st 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 



212 NOTES ~ SHELLEY [adonais 

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins ; 
Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 

1. 416. Fond wretch : etymology of " fond "? 

P. 116, 1. 444. one keen pyramid : the tomb of Caius Cestius. 
In a letter to Thomas Love Peacock, Shelley writes thus of the 
cemetery : " The English burying-place is a green slope near 
the walls [of Rome] under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and 
is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever 
beheld. To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh when 
we visited it with the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering 
of the wind among the leaves of the trees which have over- 
grown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the 
sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and 
young people who were buried there, one might, if one were to 
die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human 
mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion." 



NOTES — KEATS 



Ode to a Nightingale 

P. 120, 1. 16. Hippocrene : A spring, sacred to the Muses, 
on Mount Helicon in Boeotia. 

Ode to Psyche 

" The following poem, the last I have written, is the first and 
only one with which I have taken even moderate pains, I have, 
for the most part, dashed off my lines in a hurry ; this one 1 
have done leisurely ; I think it reads the more richly for it, and 
it will, I hope, encourage me to write other things in even a 
more peaceful and healthy spirit." — Keats, to his brother 
George. 

P. 126, 1. 9. two fair creatures : Read the myth of Cupid 
and Psyche. 

P. 127, 1. 30. delicious moan: Compare The Eve of St. 
AgneSy vii., 2. 

To Autumn 

"I never liked stubble-fields so much as now — aye, better 
than the chilly green of spring. Somehow a stubble-plain looks 

213 



214 NOTES — KEATS [to autumn 

warm, in the same way that some pictures look warm. This 
struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon 
it." — Keats to Reynolds. 

P. 129, 1. 14. Thee sitting : Read Gray's ode On the Spring^ 
then Collins's Passions. Compare the two poems with Keats's 
in the use of personification. 

Ode on Melancholy 

P. 131, 1. 26. sovran shrine: — 

" The very source and fount of Day 
Is dashed with wandering isles of night." 

— In Memoriam, xxiv. 
Fancy 

P. 132, 1. 21. heavy shoon : — 

' ' And the dull swain 
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon." 

Milton's Comus, 634-635. 

P. 133, 1. 46. sticks and straw: Note the onomatopoeia; 
compare : — 

" The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed." 

— Gray's Elegy. 

P. 135, 1. 81. Ceres' daughter : Compare Milton's description : 

" Proserpin gathering flowers, 
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis 
Was gathered — which cost Ceres all that pain 
To seek her through the world." 

— Paradise Lost, IV., 269-272. 



chapman's homer] notes -^ KEATS 215 

On First looking into Chapman's Homer 

Charles Cowden Clarke and Keats had read Chapman far 
into the night. Early the next morning the sonnet was handed 
to Clarke. It was written in 1816 and is considered the best of 
Keats's early work. 

P. 140, 1. 8. Chapman : 1557-1634. He was, therefore, a 
contemporary of Shakespeare's. He wrote poetry and dramas, 
but is best known by his translation of Homer. 

1. 11. Cortez : It should be Balboa, but the beauty of the 
poem is not marred by the error. 

Sonnet to Homer 

P. 143, 1. 1. giant ignorance : an allusion to Keats's igno- 
rance of the Greek language. 

1. 11. a budding morrow: "It will be of interest to many 
lovers both of Keats and Rossetti [D. G.] to learn that the latter 
poet, whom we have but lately lost, considered this sonnet to 
contain Keats's finest single line of poetry — 

* There is a budding morrow in midnight,' 

a line which Rossetti told me he thought one of the finest ' in all 
poetry.' " — Form an. 
Compare the verse with stanza iii. Ode on 3Ielancholy. 

I stood Tip-toe upon a Little Hill 

*' Mr. Keats is seen to his best advantasje [in this poem], and 
displays all that fertile power of association and imagery which 



216 NOTES — KEATS [i stood tip-toe 

constitutes the abstract poetical faculty as distinguished from 
every other." — Leigh Hunt. 
P. 146, 1. 18. its brim : Note the point of view. 
P. 147, 1. 22. jaunty : meaning ? 

1. 29. bees about them : cf . Ode to a Nightingale, stanza v. ; 
also To Autumn, stanza i. 

1. 38. frequent chequer = frequent checker ; shadows alter- 
nating with patches of sunshine. 
P. 149, 1. 73. wavy bodies : — 

" A shoal 
Of devious minnows wheel from where a pike 
Lurked balanced 'neath the lily pad, and whirl 
A rood of silver bellies to the day." 

— Lowell. 

Under the Willows is throughout strikingly suggestive of 
Keats' s poem. 

P. 150, 1. 92. yellow flutterings : Explain. 

P. 151, 1. 129. staid : regular, grave, calm. 

P. 152, 1. 162. Narcissus : Because of his insensibility to love 
he was made to worship his own image in the water. He was 
finally changed to the flower which bears his name. Echo, 
whose love for him was not returned, died of grief. 

Isabella ; or, the Pot of Basil. 

The story is told by Boccaccio, Decamerone, Giorn. IV., 
Nov. 5. 

P. 166, 1. 209. murdered man : " The following masterly an- 
ticipation of his end, conveyed in a single word, has been justly 
admired." — Leigh Hunt. 



ISABELLA] NOTES — KEATS 217 

P. 169, 1. 262. Hinnom's vale : the valley of Hlnnom where 
Moloch was worshipped. Compare Milton's description in Para- 
dise Lost, I., 392-405, also Moloch's speech, II., 51-105. 

P. 175, 1. 393. Persdan sword : the sword with which Perseus 
slew Medusa, one of the three gorgons. 

P. 178, 1. 442. Melpomene: the muse of tragedy. 

1.451. Baalites of pelf: those who worship money as the 
pagans worship Baal. 

P. 180, 1. 493. the Pilgrim : This does not refer to Lorenzo. 

The Eve of St. Agnes 
" St. Agnes was a Roman virgin, who suffered martyrdom in 
the reign of Diocletian. Her parents, a few days after her 
decease, are said to have had a vision of her, surrounded by 
angels, and attended by a white lamb which afterward became 
sacred to her. In the Catholic Church, formerly, the nuns used 
to bring a couple of lambs to her altar during Mass. The super- 
stition is that by taking certain measures of divination, damsels 
may get a sight of their future husbands in a dream. The 
ordinary process seems to have been by fasting." 

— Leigh Hunt. 

St. Agnes's Day is January 21 ; St. Agnes's Eve, January 
20. 

P. 183, 1. 31. snarling trumpets : Does the adjective denote 
a quality of the sound, or is it, from Porphyro's point of view, 
descriptive of the situation ? 

P. 188, 1. 120. witch's sieve: Compare Macbeth^ I., iii., 8. 

P. 190, 1. 171. Merlin paid his Demon : " The monstrous debt 
was his monstrous existence which he owed to a demon and 



218 NOTES — KEATS [st. agnes 

repaid when he died or disa])peared through the working of one 
of his own spells by Viviane.'" — Forman. 

Compare Tennyson's Vivian in Idylls of the King. 

P. 193, 1. 218. gules : " How proper, as well as pretty, the 
heraldic term gules, considering the occasion. Bed would not 
have been a fiftieth part as good." — Leigh Hunt. 

P. 194, 1. 241. where swart Paynims pray : Paynim : pagan. 
Therefore a missal would be treasured more highly because of 
dangerous surrouudings. 



INDEX TO NOTES 



Adonais, 208. 
Arethusa, 206. 
Austerlitz, battle of, 207. 
Austria, 207. 
Autumn, Ode to, 213. 

Baiae, 203. 

Balboa, 215. 

Baldwin, The Book of Elegies, 

209. 
Bion. 208. 
Boccaccio, 216. 
Browning, Lost Leader, 204 
Byron, 207, 209, 210. 

The Dream, 207. 

Cestius, Caius, 212. 

Chapman, 215. 

Chatterton, 211. 

Churchyard, A Summer Evening, 

208. 
Clairmont, Miss, 203. 
Cloud, The, 201. 
Coleridge, Sonnet to, 204. 

Ancient Mariner, 205. 



Coleridge, Christabel, 205. 

Ode to Tranquillity 

205. 
A Sunset, 205. 
Collins, Ode to Evening, 208. 

The Passions, 214. 
Cortez, 215. 

Denmark, 207. 
Diocletian, 217. 
Dowden, 202, 205, 206. 

Egypt, 208. 

Euganean Hills, Lines written 

among, 207. 
Eve of St. Agnes, 217. 

Forman, H. B., 215, 218. 

France. 204. 

French Revolution, 204. 

Gay, 209. 

Godwin, William, 206. 
Gosse, Eighteenth Century Lit- 
erature, 211. 



219 



220 



INDEX TO NOTES 



Gray, Elegy, 214. 

Gray, Ode on Spring, 214. 

Hades, fields of, 203. 
Hales, 210. 
Hamlet, 210. 
Hippocrene, 213. 

Homer, On First Looking into 
Chapman's, 215. 
Sonnet to, 215. 
Hunt, 210, 216, 217, 218. 

I stood Tip-toe upon a Little Hill, 

215. 
Isabella ; or the Pot of Basil, 216. 
Italy, Kingdom of. 207. 

Keats, George, 213. 

John, 209, 210, 211, 215. 

Lowell, Vision of Sir Launfal, 
206. 
Under the Willows, 216. 
Lucan, 211. 

Mason, Mrs. (LadyMountcashell), 

203. 
Med win, 203. 
Melancholy, Ode on, 214. 
Merchant of Venice, 210, 211. 
Milton, Lycidas, 209. 

Comus, 214. 
Mont Blanc, 205. 
Moore, 210. 
Moschus, 208. 



Napoleon, 207. 

Narcissus, 216. 

Nero, 211. 

Nightingale, Ode to, 209, 213. 

Ozymandias, 208. 

Peacock, 212. 

Perseus, 217. 
Pisa, 203. 
Pope, 209. 
Prussia, 207. 
Psyche, Ode to, 213. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 214. 
Rossetti, W. M., 210. 
D. G., 214. 
Russia, 207. 

Saintsbury, Elizabethan Litera- 
ture, 211. 
Sensitive Plant, The, 203. 
Shelley, P. B., 202, 205. 210. 
Mrs.,203, 205, 208. 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 211. 
Skylark, Ode to, 201. 
Spenser, 209. 

Tempest, The, 202. 
Tennyson, In Memoriam, 211, 
214. 
Idylls of the King, 218. 
Thames, The, 208. 
Theocritus, 208. 
Trelawny, 205. 



INDEX TO NOTES 



221 



Urania, 209. 

Venice, 207. 

Vienna, Congress of, 207. 

Wagram, battle of, 207. 
West Wind, Ode to, 202. 
Williams, Edward, 202. 
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 203. 



Wordsworth, 205. 

Prelude, 204. 

Sonnet to, 204. 

Tintern Abbey, 
203. 

Night Piece, 201. 

Intimations of Im- 
mortality, 206. 



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